Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 696

Summary for Saturday, 20th January 2024 - DAY 696

• Russia has accused Ukraine of being behind a drone strike that sparked a huge inferno at an oil depot in western Russia on Friday, the latest in a series of escalating cross-border attacks. Russian officials and news reports said four oil reservoirs with a total capacity of 6,000 cubic metres (1.6m gallons) were set on fire at the oil refinery after the drone reached Klintsy, a city of 70,000 people located about 60km (40 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Air defences electronically jammed the drone but it dropped its explosive payload on the facility, the Bryansk regional governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said. There were no casualties, he added. The strike is the second on a Russian oil depot in as many days, part of what Kyiv has called “fair” retaliation for Moscow’s strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Separately, a fire tore through the Ryazan oil refinery, Russia’s third largest, on Friday, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said, quoting emergency services. The fire at the oil refinery, south-east of Moscow and is controlled by Rosneft, has been put out and there were no injuries, RIA news agency reported.
  
  
• US aid to Ukraine remains deadlocked in Congress despite Joe Biden signing on Friday a measure to keep the US government funded. Hard-right House Republicans, led by the speaker, Mike Johnson, are ensuring that the chances of more money and weapons for Kyiv in its fight with Moscow hinge on negotiations for US immigration changes. After a Wednesday White House meeting, Johnson told reporters: “We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security and sovereignty of Ukraine. But the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security.” Many observers suggest Republicans do not want a deal, instead using the issue, and the concept of more aid for Ukraine, as clubs with which to attack Biden in an election year.
  
  
• A Russian court in Siberia on Friday sentenced a man to 19 years in prison for shooting a military enlistment officer, while prosecutors in St Petersburg asked for a 28-year sentence for Darya Trepova, a woman charged in the bombing of a cafe last April that killed a prominent military blogger, reports said. The developments underscore the authorities’ determination to harshly punish anyone who acts against President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, especially those committing acts of violence, in the run-up to the presidential election in March that the incumbent is all but certain to win.
  
  
• The European Union said on Friday it would drastically increase ammunition production this year in response to Ukraine’s growing pleas for support in its war against Russia, which prompted the French ambassador to protest against the country’s “growing involvement” in the conflict. The EU will be able to produce at least 1.3m rounds of ammunition by the end of this year, the EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said on a visit to Estonia. “We are at a crucial moment for our collective security in Europe, and in the war of aggression run by Russia in Ukraine, Europe must and will continue to support Ukraine with all its means,” he said.
  
  
• Landmines once again surround the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which is in Russian hands, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday. Europe’s largest nuclear facility fell to Russian forces shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Kyiv and Moscow have repeatedly accused each other of planning an incident at the site. “Mines along the perimeter of the ZNPP (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant) ... are now back in place,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.
  
  
• Nato will launch its biggest military exercises in decades next week, with about 90,000 personnel set to take part in months of drills aimed at showing the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia, top officers said on Thursday.
  
  
• Finland does not see any immediate military threat from Russia, the country’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said on Friday at a press conference with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson.
  
  
• Britain brushed off a Russian plan to ban UK ships from fishing in Moscow’s waters on Friday as an example of Russia’s “self-imposed isolation”, while an industry body said it would have no impact because Britain’s fleet doesn’t fish there anyway.
  
  
• The EU has started discussions on a new sanctions package for Russia that it aims to approve by 24 February, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
  
  
• About 160 people who applied for asylum at Finland’s eastern border last year have since disappeared, amid a sudden surge of asylum seekers arriving via Russia, Finland’s immigration authority said.
  
  
• The Kremlin said on Friday there was no prospect of reviving the Black Sea grain deal and that alternative routes for shipping Ukrainian grain carried huge risks, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Police in the central Russian republic of Bashkortostan on Friday arrested more protesters incensed over the jailing of local activist Fail Alsynov, who campaigns for the protection of the Bashkir language, as a court sentenced nine demonstrators to short jail terms, reports AFP.
  

Russian forces launched seven Shahed-136/131 attack drones against Ukraine overnight, four of which were shot down by Ukraine’s air defence

Romanian protesters have ended their blockade at the Porubne-Siret crossing along the Romanian-Ukrainian border

Ukrainian military shares footage of one of the largest Russian assaults on Avdiivka

The 110th Separate Mechanised Brigade named after General Marko Bezruchko, one of the units that is defending Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast, has shared a video that shows one of the largest Russian assaults on the city, which took place in October 2023.

Putin sent their husbands to Ukraine, and now these women are risking everything to bring them home

In a rare challenge to the Kremlin, a growing number of Russian women are fighting to bring home their husbands, brothers and sons who were drafted to fight in Ukraine.

They say the men have served their time on the front lines, 15 months after some 300,000 reservists were called up to bolster Russia’s struggling campaign. But with little sign of  President Vladimir Putin scaling back his ambitions, the military is ignoring their pleas and propagandists have sought to villainize those speaking out.

The women’s mounting frustration has bonded them together, providing common cause in their defiant public stand just months before Putin will extend his rule in an election.

NBC News spoke with a number of women who are part of a growing movement calling for their loved ones to be discharged and allowed to return to civilian life. They have emerged as among the few voices in Russia willing to publicly question how the Kremlin is conducting the war, which continues to reshape the country even as it descends into a stalemate.

Asya is one of those who is desperate for her husband to return home.
He was drafted in September 2022, she said, and is still in Ukraine serving in an artillery unit more than a year later.
She said she now fears her husband, who worked as a driver before he was called up, will be stuck there indefinitely.
“You try to dig yourself out of this pit every day and think, ‘How long can this carry on?’” Asya said, speaking on the phone from her home in the Moscow region. “How long can they mock us like this?”

A Russian woman protests outside the sefense ministry in Moscow earlier this month.Telegram

Asya said she is struggling to cope by herself with their 1 1/2-year-old daughter. “I was not planning to be a single mother,” she said. “I need a husband at home.”

Like others in the story, she did not want her last name or the name of her husband to be published out of fear of retribution against her family. Putin’s war next door has brought a far-reaching crackdown on dissent at home, and anything that can be perceived as an anti-war stance could result in arrest or even jail time.

Yet Asya is not alone in expressing her dismay.
She said she wrote to regional and federal officials demanding answers, but when none came she turned to other women facing the same plight.

They formed a group that morphed into a channel on the Telegram messaging app called “The Way Home,” or “Put’ Domoi” in Russian, which now has more than 39,000 followers.

When the channel launched in August, the administrators were still voicing support for the “special military operation,” as the Kremlin calls its invasion, and hoped that Putin would intervene to return their men.
But with their pleas unanswered, their rhetoric has changed in recent weeks.
The lengthy mobilizations with no clear end in sight have led a growing group of women to take a stand.Anadolu / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The women are increasingly questioning the purpose of Putin’s war — alongside sometimes scathing criticism of the president himself. “We have no hope under your leadership,” read one of their posts published last month.
One of the women’s main issues is with Putin’s mobilization decree, which does not clearly lay out an end date for draftees’ service, leaving the men at the Kremlin’s disposal indefinitely.

The group has tried to organize protests across Russia but said authorities have refused to sanction them due to Covid-19 restrictions, despite other public events going through. They have engaged in other acts of civil disobedience such as wearing #returnmyhusband stickers on their clothing and cars, and laying flowers on war memorials across the country. They wear white headscarves as their distinguishing mark.

Their profile has grown in recent weeks, culminating in a public audience with Boris Nadezhdin, who is planning to run against Putin in the March presidential election. A liberal-leaning politician, Nadezhdin has called the war Putin’s biggest mistake. It is unclear whether he will clear the hurdle of 100,000 signatures needed to get his name on the ballot, and how far he will be allowed to push his criticism of the war in an election critics see as a sham to maintain the illusion of democracy.

At a meeting at a cozy party venue in eastern Moscow last week, which NBC News attended, some of the wives said they wanted the whole country to see that they are “ordinary Russian women” and their stories are real.
They said they were happy to meet with any other candidates, including Putin himself, as well as the Kremlin propagandists who have been attacking their campaign. “We are fighting for justice,” a woman named Antonina, whose husband was mobilized and is currently injured, told the audience of several dozen women and journalists at the event. “But we are the bad ones, for some reason.”

So far, “The Way Home” has not reported any detentions of its activists, either for their public protests or for the meeting with Nadezhdin. Their most outspoken activist, Maria Andreeva, was temporarily held by police officers after standing with a banner in front of a monument close to the Kremlin last weekend, but she told NBC News she was let go shortly after.

Leading Kremlin propagandists like state TV host Vladimir Solovyov have been trying to discredit the women in social media posts labeling them foreign-sponsored saboteurs, linking them to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and accusing them of trying to destabilize Russia.

The pushback is hardly surprising, Asya said. “We are inconvenient for the authorities,” she added.

Putin is running for his fifth term in March, and although the result is in little doubt, the Kremlin will be seeking to avoid any high-profile confrontations, especially with a group whose members are far from hardened opposition activists and whose partners are still on the front lines. So it appears the Russian president has chosen to ignore the issue for now.

He did not raise the topic of demobilization during his biggest news conference of the war last month, despite the women telling NBC News they sent in hundreds of questions for the president.

“The government is facing a difficult choice,” Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst and former Putin speechwriter, told NBC News. “The Kremlin’s repression machine is fine-tuned against ‘damn’ western-learning liberals and the nation’s ‘traitors,’ but these women are not it,” he said. “They are the people that the Kremlin is leaning on and tries to represent, so mass repressions against them is a completely different story. It’s not a story the public will like.”

NBC News reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment, but did not hear back.

Russia has 'reinstalled mines' along perimeter of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the IAEA expressed concern over this development, emphasising that the presence of mines contradicts IAEA safety standards. This area is restricted and not accessible to operational plant personnel.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has reported that Ukraine maintains a presence on the left bank of the Dnipro River and has continued to repel Russian attacks despite “logistical concerns”.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy has spoken of putting together “new bilateral agreements” that will “reanimate” the system of international law.

Next week will see more international work, including those with our EU partners. We will increase activity. This is also true for security commitments from partners. We are putting together new, strong bilateral agreements. January and February must produce more results in this area. We can already see specific dates when such new and powerful documents may be signed.

I am grateful to our entire team that participates in the relevant negotiations, as well as all leaders and nations that are prepared to take truly ambitious steps. By developing such a new security commitment architecture, we are effectively reanimating the system of international law. And when justice and security are restored in Ukraine, this will also work for the rest of the world.

We are also working with key partners on specific military aid packages that will be delivered right now, in the coming weeks and months. I thank all of Ukraine’s friends around the world who understand that the battlefield cannot simply wait and that life-saving efforts cannot be postponed, as well as those who work to expedite decisions that are needed right now.

Closing Summary:

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has spoken of putting together “new bilateral agreements” that will “reanimate” the system of international law. He added that new military packages will be delivered “ in the coming weeks and months”.
  
  
• The UK’s Ministry of Defence has reported that Ukraine maintains a presence on the left bank of the Dnipro River and has continued to repel Russian attacks despite “logistical concerns”.
  
  
• Russian lawmakers have prepared a bill allowing for the confiscation of money and property from people who spread “deliberately false information” about the country’s armed forces, a senior member of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin said on Saturday, Reuters has reported.
  
  
• Russia has lost 375,270 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Saturday. This number includes 750 casualties over the past day.
  
  
• Russian troops have reinstalled mines along the perimeter of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in the occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast, the Euromaidan Press website has reported, citing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
  
  
• The wife of a Russian soldier delivered an emotional appeal for his return from Ukraine on Saturday at the election headquarters of President Vladimir Putin – it was a defiant gesture by Maria Andreyeva in a country where open criticism of the war is banned.
  
  
• Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has referenced a quote from Winston Churchill in an interview with Le Figaro. Discussing the war in Ukraine, he said: “Give us the tools and we will finish the job.”
  
  
• Romanian protesters have ended their blockade at the Porubne-Siret crossing along the Romanian-Ukrainian border the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the border guard service.
  
  
• Russian forces launched seven Shahed-136/131 attack drones against Ukraine overnight, four of which were shot down by Ukraine’s air defence, according to a morning update from the general staff.
  
  
• Russia has accused Ukraine of being behind a drone strike that sparked a huge inferno at an oil depot in western Russia on Friday, the latest in a series of escalating cross-border attacks. Russian officials and news reports said four oil reservoirs with a total capacity of 6,000 cubic metres (1.6m gallons) were set on fire at the oil refinery after the drone reached Klintsy, a city of 70,000 people located about 60km (40 miles) from the Ukrainian border.