Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 705

Summary for Monday, 29th January 2024 - DAY 705

• The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, will meet his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Szijjarto, in western Ukraine on Monday ahead of an EU summit aimed at unlocking aid for the war-torn country. Relations between the two neighbours have been strained and were further aggravated when Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in December vetoed €50bn ($55bn) in EU aid for Kyiv. In an effort to mend ties, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, suggested a direct meeting with Orbán, and Monday’s talks between Szijjarto and Kuleba in the city of Uzhhorod are intended to lay the groundwork. Hungary, which has maintained ties with the Kremlin, has also frustrated Nato allies by taking so long to formally approve Sweden’s bid to join the alliance.
  
  
• Zelenskiy has spoken about the risk of the Ukraine conflict escalating into a third world war, as he pressed his case for foreign aid in an interview with the German state broadcaster ARD on Sunday. Zelenskiy said that if Russia attacked a Nato country, it would be “the beginning of the third world war”. Asked whether he was disappointed that Germany did not plan to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles, Zelenskiy said he was only disappointed Germany had not played “the role it should have played in the first occupation of Ukraine”. Referring to the weakness of the west’s response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, he said it wasn’t just about the German response. “It’s not just about Olaf Scholz,” he said. “It concerns European leaders and the US.” In the US, Zelenskiy said Ukraine had support from across the political divide. “There are individual Republicans who do not support Ukraine, but the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans support Ukraine,” he said. On whether a second term of Donald Trump would affect support for his country, he said US policy did not depend on a single person.
  
  
• US military funding for Ukraine carries a key deterrent message for China, the head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Sunday at the start of a visit to Washington aimed at lobbying Congress to continue funding the war against Russia. President Joe Biden has asked Congress to approve $61bn in fresh aid to Ukraine. But the talks have become bogged down as Republican lawmakers demand major changes in US border control policy as the price for their approval. “What matters is that Ukraine gets continued support, because we need to realise that this is closely watched in Beijing,” Stoltenberg said on Fox News.
  
  
• The UK defence ministry believes that the increase in arson attacks on Russian enlistment offices “is highly likely due to a greater sense of dissatisfaction with the war among the Russian population”. There have been 220 attacks on Russian military enlistment offices since the start of the war in February 2022, with 113 in the last six months.
  
  
• Russia launched drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across wide areas of Ukraine, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday. Preliminary information did not show any casualties in the attacks, but Russia and Ukraine have increased their air attacks on each other’s territory in recent months, targeting critical military, energy and transport infrastructure. The air force said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia attacked the central Poltava region with two ballistic missiles fired from the Iskander ballistic missile system, and three surface-to-air missiles over the Donetsk region in the east.
  
  
• Defence ministry officials conspired with employees from a Ukrainian arms firm to embezzle almost $40m earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells, Ukraine’s security service said. Five people have been charged, with one person detained trying to cross the Ukrainian border. Corruption has been a major roadblock in Kyiv’s bid to joint the European Union and Nato, with officials from both blocs demanding widespread anti-graft reforms before Kyiv can join them.
  
  
• The beauty giant Avon has been criticised for its Russia links, amid the ongoing war. At the outset of the conflict, the company said it was stopping investment in Russia, where it has a large worker base, and was ending exports from its Russian factory to other parts of the world. However, research by the BBC has discovered the company is still recruiting new sales agents in Russia, with recruits offered prizes, cash bonuses and even holidays for hitting targets, the broadcaster reports.
  
  
• The hacking group NoName05716 claims to be preparing to target the Ukrainian government with help from other hacking groups 22С, Skillnet, CyberDragon, Federal Legion, People’s Cyber ​​Army and Phoenix.
  

Russia’s energy ministry has proposed restricting flights over Russian energy facilities, the Vedomosti daily reported on Monday, after a spate of Ukraine-linked attacks this month on oil infrastructure

Russians who want rid of Putin pin election hopes on anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin

Getting opposition hopeful on ballot would be a victory, say voters who queued in cold to back him

Thousands of Russians have queued for hours in the freezing cold across the country over the past few days to show their support for an anti-war candidate before this year’s stage-managed presidential ballot in which Vladimir Putin is the only permitted winner.

Boris Nadezhdin, a centre-right candidate who has called himself a “principled opponent” of the war, has said in his manifesto that Putin made a “fatal mistake by starting the special military operation”, the Kremlin’s preferred term for its invasion. “Putin sees the world from the past and is dragging Russia into the past,” he added.
As the end-of-the-month deadline approached for Nadezhdin to collect the necessary 100,000 signatures to appear on the ballot for the elections in March, social media posts showed Russians queueing up in long lines to give their signatures in cities across the country.

Read more here.

Another Russian oil refinery falls victim to a drone attack

Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the strike on the Slavneft-Yanos oil refinery, but it follows a series of attacks on such facilities in recent weeks.

Special Operations Forces destroy Russian strongpoints and set up Ukrainian flag

The Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine showed images of the destruction of the strongpoints of the Russians on the Zaporizhzhia front.

The head of the Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom plans to meet International Atomic Energy Agency head, Rafael Grossi, in Russia in the middle of February

Forced evacuation of children to be carried out in nine settlements of Donetsk region – Reintegration Ministry

Summary of the day so far...

• Hungary is open to using the EU budget for a proposed €50bn ($54bn) aid package to Ukraine, the prime minister’s political director said. Balázs Orbán, the chief political aide to Viktor Orbán, confirmed that Budapest had sent a proposal to Brussels on Saturday showing it was open to using the budget for the aid package and issuing common EU debt to finance it if other “caveats” were added.
  
  
• Russia said on Monday its forces had taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, but Ukraine has denied this. The Russian claim was made in a defence ministry statement. Volodymyr Fityo, the head of communications for Ukraine’s ground forces, said on national TV: “This does not correspond to reality. There are battles taking place near this locality.”
  
  
• The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, will meet his Hungarian counterpart, Péter Szijjártó, in western Ukraine on Monday ahead of an EU summit aimed at unlocking aid for the war-torn country. Relations between the two neighbours have been strained and were further aggravated when Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in December vetoed €50bn ($55bn) in EU aid for Kyiv. In an effort to mend ties, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, suggested a direct meeting with Orbán, and Monday’s talks between Szijjártó and Kuleba in the city of Uzhhorod are intended to lay the groundwork. Hungary, which has maintained ties with the Kremlin, has also frustrated Nato allies by taking so long to formally approve Sweden’s bid to join the alliance.
  
  
• Zelenskiy has spoken about the risk of the Ukraine conflict escalating into a third world war, as he pressed his case for foreign aid in an interview with the German state broadcaster ARD on Sunday. Zelenskiy said that if Russia attacked a Nato country, it would be “the beginning of the third world war”. Asked whether he was disappointed that Germany did not plan to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles, Zelenskiy said he was only disappointed Germany had not played “the role it should have played in the first occupation of Ukraine”. Referring to the weakness of the west’s response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, he said it wasn’t just about the German response. “It’s not just about Olaf Scholz,” he said. “It concerns European leaders and the US.” In the US, Zelenskiy said Ukraine had support from across the political divide. “There are individual Republicans who do not support Ukraine, but the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans support Ukraine,” he said. On whether a second term of Donald Trump would affect support for his country, he said US policy did not depend on a single person.
  
  
• US military funding for Ukraine carries a key deterrent message for China, the head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Sunday at the start of a visit to Washington aimed at lobbying Congress to continue funding the war against Russia. President Joe Biden has asked Congress to approve $61bn in fresh aid to Ukraine. But the talks have become bogged down as Republican lawmakers demand major changes in US border control policy as the price for their approval. “What matters is that Ukraine gets continued support, because we need to realise that this is closely watched in Beijing,” Stoltenberg said on Fox News.
  
  
• The UK defence ministry believes that the increase in arson attacks on Russian enlistment offices “is highly likely due to a greater sense of dissatisfaction with the war among the Russian population”. There have been 220 attacks on Russian military enlistment offices since the start of the war in February 2022, with 113 in the last six months.
  
  
• Russia launched drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across wide areas of Ukraine, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday. Preliminary information did not show any casualties in the attacks, but Russia and Ukraine have increased their air attacks on each other’s territory in recent months, targeting critical military, energy and transport infrastructure. The air force said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia attacked the central Poltava region with two ballistic missiles fired from the Iskander ballistic missile system, and three surface-to-air missiles over the Donetsk region in the east.
  
  
• Defence ministry officials conspired with employees from a Ukrainian arms firm to embezzle almost $40m earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells, Ukraine’s security service said. Five people have been charged, with one person detained trying to cross the Ukrainian border. Corruption has been a major roadblock in Kyiv’s bid to joint the European Union and Nato, with officials from both blocs demanding widespread anti-graft reforms before Kyiv can join them.
  
  
• The beauty giant Avon has been criticised for its Russia links amid the ongoing war. At the outset of the conflict, the company said it was stopping investment in Russia, where it has a large worker base, and was ending exports from its Russian factory to other parts of the world. However, research by the BBC has discovered the company is still recruiting new sales agents in Russia, with recruits offered prizes, cash bonuses and even holidays for hitting targets, the broadcaster reports.
  
  
• The hacking group NoName05716 claims to be preparing to target the Ukrainian government with help from other hacking groups 22С, Skillnet, CyberDragon, Federal Legion, People’s Cyber ​​Army and Phoenix.
  

Putin has finally united Russians around the world—against himself

Russians have been running away from political repression by Soviet and post-Soviet regimes for decades. They fled in their millions long before the war in Ukraine. But they never created vast diaspora communities until now.
Districts like Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, which are known as Russian havens, are really dominated by Ashkenazi Jewish communities drawn from a range of former Soviet countries.

In many cases, Russians abroad say they feel insecure around their former countrymen. And, in any case, neighborliness is not a famously Russian trait; there is even a well-known saying about getting even with the neighbors you hate: “Do nasty things at night,” which suggests you take revenge on the people next door under cover of darkness.
It’s taken President Vladimir Putin’s hateful invasion of Ukraine and domestic crackdown to bring the current wave of exiles together.

Russian activists are creating vast new communities in Germany, Georgia, Armenia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, France, the U.S., Israel, and Central Asia. Russian volunteer movements are helping Ukrainian refugees; charity activity is on the rise; Russian shelters are springing up in many cities receiving Russian exiles around the world: humanitarian and political activity seems to be the glue holding Russians together abroad these days. Even in Miami, rich Russians donate, volunteer, and host Ukrainian families escaping the war.

The new breed of Russian exile is united by the Kremlin’s latest draconian clampdown. Where Josef Stalin’s KGB used to designate out-of-favor Soviet citizens as “enemies of the people,” the modern term of choice is “foreign agents.”
Putin’s choice of terminology has undermined past efforts to build bridges to emigrant Russians in the West.
Russians who rarely united in diasporas before the war are now helping their exiled brothers.
The first “International Congress of Foreign Agents” will be held on Feb. 3 in Berlin. The event will bring together more than 150 designated ‘foreign agents.’
“All of us, hundreds of so-called ‘foreign agents,’ have shown solidarity, pulled in a solid and influential community in order to provide legal aid to persecuted people inside Russia and help exiles with visas, finding homes, finding jobs in exile,” the organizer of the congress, Marat Gelman, told The Daily Beast. “We do not consider ourselves foreign agents; our first congress aims to present our movement to the world. It is very important that we clearly state what we think about the war in Ukraine, about the upcoming presidential elections in Russia this year.”
The former editor-in-chief of The Russian Magazine, Alexander Morozov, is another of the organizers. “Putin and his men have totally failed to turn Russians abroad loyal. The expats do not believe Putin any longer,” he told The Daily Beast.

The founder of the congress is convinced that Russian “foreign agents” will get together for brainstorming once every six months. “The Kremlin did not mean it, but they brought together the leaders of Russia’s civil society: journalists, human rights defenders, leading writers, film directors, and so on.” Gelman said. “This generation will always look at Russia with the eyes of this community, which will be telling the world about the Kremlin’s repressive actions—this congress is their final verdict.”
Morozov is a professor at Prague university teaching the history of Russian political language. “Moscow’s war has emboldened Russians in the Czech Republic—more than 3,000 marched against Putin’s aggression in 2022,” he said. There were no crowds marching in the Kremlin’s support when Prague ordered 63 Russian diplomats to leave the country.

The Ark group based in Armenia has become a focal point for providing help to more than 500,000 Russians who decided they can no longer live in Putin’s Russia—at least for as long as Russia is at war with Ukraine.

Thousands of Russian journalists and human rights defenders are among those who have gone into exile. “Even those reporters who did not like each other for various reasons before the war are helping and supporting each other these days in multiple chats and groups on social media,” said Anna Mongayt, a well-known presenter on Rain TV, which is now exiled in Amsterdam. Mongayt is one of the ‘foreign agents’ organizing the Congress in Berlin. “The state of Russia ‘selected’ for persecution the best, pure and cleanest community of people, who are not indifferent: neither to helping Ukrainians in trouble nor to the future of Russia,” she said.

Celebrated artists are also among the new movement of free Russians against the war. The ongoing world tour around four continents by famous Russian rapper Oxxxymiron brought a huge crowd of fans to the Factory club in Cape Town earlier this month. Thousands of fans came to listen to him rap in Dubai’s Agenda Venues. One of his songs captures the mood: “Start with yourself! I killed the Empire in me.”
“The canceling of independent Russian culture has failed, exiled artists continue to create and perform abroad,” said Vitalij Manski, exiled film director and president of the Latvia-based Artdocfest. He told The Daily Beast that artists now had a choice to make. Many have moved abroad; others like Valery Gergiyev, the director of the Bolshoi Theater, chose to remain and show their loyalty to Putin. “I don’t think somebody like Valery Gergiyev is going to be conducting outside of Russia any time soon,” he said.

Since 2007, Artdocfest has been bringing together and helping to develop documentary film projects on the most pressing social issues and discovering and supporting filmmakers. Russian authorities designated Manski as a ‘foreign agent’ in June. According to a report by the Interfax news agency, “Manski opposed the special military operation in Ukraine, declared support for the Ukrainian authorities, spoke negatively towards citizens of the Russian Federation, identified the Russian Federation with Nazi Germany... He received support from foreign sources.”

Like many documentary makers, Manski is reluctant to make any conclusions before seeing things with his own eyes, so he remains skeptical about the upcoming Congress of Foreign Agents.
“I am skeptical about communities and foundations. Who unites with whom? But I will wait and see the gathering of ‘foreign agents,’ it might reassure me,” said Manski, who will take part in the event in Berlin. “The community needs vertical structure to realize its projects, since I meet many lost and depressed Russian exiles who have not found themselves.”

In 2021, Putin vowed that the “foreign agent” law would not label masses of Russians and that the danger of it “is greatly exaggerated.”
Two years later, hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Putin regime, plus underground resistance groups, at home are united in communities, movements, and foundations. For example, Zima, a project of immigrants based in London, is helping Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian exiles with cultural projects and platforms for their presentations; SlovoNovo Forum, which was founded by Gelman, is bringing the best blacklisted Russian artists to a festival in Montenegro. There are as many as 98 Russian independent media outlets and popular bloggers in exile and they are watched by 20 million Russian speakers both abroad and inside the country.
The list of foreign agents, fugitives, traitors of Russia includes more than 500 names, including Morozov, Gelman, Mansky and Mongayt.
Moscow’s social polls claim that 61 percent of Russians consider “foreign agents” to be “most likely traitors,” and 16 percent say they are fighters for human rights. Mongayt, one of the congress organizers believes that it is important for designated Russians to help each other feel dignified. “Designated and exiled we are still citizens of Russia with our fans and audience; we hope that the congress will give birth to great initiatives and also will help to bring a structure to activists,” she told The Daily Beast.

Closing Summary

• Hungary is open to using the EU budget for a proposed €50bn ($54bn) aid package to Ukraine, the prime minister’s political director said. Balázs Orbán, the chief political aide to Viktor Orbán, confirmed that Budapest had sent a proposal to Brussels on Saturday showing it was open to using the budget for the aid package and issuing common EU debt to finance it if other “caveats” were added.
  
  
• Representatives of the EU member states will meet on Monday evening to discuss funding for Ukraine as pressure mounts on Viktor Orbán to cave in and agree to a €50bn four-year package on the table.
  
  
• Russia said on Monday its forces had taken control of the village of Tabaivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, but Ukraine denied this. The Russian claim was made in a defence ministry statement. Volodymyr Fityo, the head of communications for Ukraine’s ground forces, said on national TV: “This does not correspond to reality. There are battles taking place near this locality.”
  
  
• The Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, met his Hungarian counterpart, Péter Szijjártó, in western Ukraine on Monday ahead of an EU summit aimed at unlocking aid for the war-torn country.
  
  
• Volodymyr Zelenskiy has spoken about the risk of the Ukraine conflict escalating into a third world war, as he pressed his case for foreign aid in an interview with the German state broadcaster ARD on Sunday. Zelenskiy said that if Russia attacked a Nato country, it would be “the beginning of the third world war”.
  
  
• US military funding for Ukraine carries a key deterrent message for China, the head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Sunday at the start of a visit to Washington aimed at lobbying Congress to continue funding the war against Russia. Joe Biden has asked Congress to approve $61bn in fresh aid to Ukraine.
  
  
• The UK defence ministry believes that an increase in arson attacks on Russian enlistment offices “is highly likely due to a greater sense of dissatisfaction with the war among the Russian population”. There have been 220 attacks on Russian military enlistment offices since the start of the war in February 2022, with 113 in the last six months.
  
  
• Russia launched drone and missile attacks targeting civilian and critical infrastructure across wide areas of Ukraine, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday. Preliminary information did not show any casualties in the attacks.
  
  
• Defence ministry officials conspired with employees from a Ukrainian arms firm to embezzle almost $40m earmarked to buy 100,000 mortar shells, Ukraine’s security service said. Five people have been charged, with one person detained trying to cross the Ukrainian border.
  
  
• The beauty giant Avon has been criticised for its Russia links amid the ongoing war. At the outset of the conflict, the company said it was stopping investment in Russia, where it has a large worker base, and was ending exports from its Russian factory to other parts of the world. However, research by the BBC has discovered the company is still recruiting new sales agents in Russia, with recruits offered prizes, cash bonuses and even holidays for hitting targets, the broadcaster reports.
  
  
• The hacking group NoName05716 claims to be preparing to target the Ukrainian government with help from other hacking groups 22С, Skillnet, CyberDragon, Federal Legion, People’s Cyber ​​Army and Phoenix.