Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 653

Summary for Friday, 8th December 2023 - DAY 653

• Ukraine has told residents to save energy after a power plant near the front line was hit by shelling, in the first such warning this winter.
  “This afternoon, the enemy attacked one of the thermal power plants in the front-line zone. The equipment was seriously damaged as a result of shelling,” the energy ministry said on Thursday.
  
  
• British foreign secretary David Cameron urged US lawmakers to approve fresh aid for Ukraine, one day after Senate Republicans blocked a funding bill for Kyiv. “I’m not worried about the strength and unity and consensus and bravery of the Ukrainian people … I’m worried that we’re not going to do what we need to do,” Cameron told the Aspen Security Forum in the US capital.
  
  
• The Biden administration is considering getting behind new restrictions on who can seek asylum and an expanded deportation process to secure new aid for Ukraine and Israel in a supplemental funding bill, a source familiar with discussions told Reuters. The White House and congress are racing to strike a deal that would deliver military aid to the two allied nations while discouraging illegal immigration across the US-Mexico border with only a week until lawmakers depart for a Christmas break.
  
  
• French President Emmanuel Macron met Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán in a bid to break the deadlock ahead of an EU summit after the Hungarian leader threatened to block Ukraine’s accession talks. Macron welcomed Orban at the Élysée Palace for a working dinner to discuss, according to the French presidency, “several subjects” on the agenda for the EU summit next week, including “various aspects of European support for Ukraine”.
  
  
• Ukraine began using train platforms to bypass a border blockade by Polish truck drivers, Ukrzalynitsya, Ukraine’s rail network, said. The first train deployed in the operation moved 23 trucks across the border from Ukraine into Poland, a statement said.
  
  
• The UK and US accused Russian security services of engaging in a sustained cyber-espionage campaign against top politicians, journalists and NGOs. The UK foreign ministry said Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind “unsuccessful attempts to interfere in UK political processes” and said it had summoned Russia’s ambassador to London about the issue.
  
  
• Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida pledged $4.5bn to Ukraine, including $1bn in humanitarian aid to help support the war-torn country’s recovery effort in an online summit of leading industrial nations. The $1bn humanitarian aid includes funding for generators and other power supplies, as well as measures to clear mines planted by Russia, the foreign ministry said. The remaining $3.5bn includes funding for credit guarantees for World Bank loans to Ukraine.
  
  
• Kyiv has agreed with two American firms to jointly manufacture vital 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine, a Ukrainian minister said, although production will not start for at least two years. “We have agreements with two leading American companies to jointly produce, in Ukraine, 155-calibre ammunition,” Oleksandr Kamyshin, minister for strategic industries, said in televised comments.
  
  
• Lawmakers in Russia set the country’s 2024 presidential election for 17 March, moving Vladimir Putin a step closer to a fifth term in office. Members of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, voted unanimously Thursday to approve a decree setting the date.
  
  
• Russian forces relied heavily on aerial attacks in their slow-moving campaign to win control of eastern Ukraine and resorted to new smaller attack groups in pressing to capture the beleaguered town of Avdiivka. “For the second day in a row, occupying forces have been actively using kamikaze drones and aviation. And the number of combat clashes has significantly increased,” Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun told national television.
  

Ukrainian air defences shot down 14 out of 19 missiles fired by Russia during a morning air strike on Friday, Ukraine’s air force spokesman said.

Ukrainians load their trucks onto rail cars to bypass Polish trucker blockade

Ukrainian truck transport companies plan to circumvent blocked road border crossings with Poland using rail transport, incurring costs of €1,600 per truck loaded on a rail platform

Ukrainian trucks on a rail platform. (Video picture grab, source: X@NOELreports)

Ukrainian transport companies are now utilizing a costly but effective solution to bypass the Polish trucker blockade at border crossings, with the Ukrainian companies loading trucks onto rail cars and transporting them across the border.
The strategy, aimed at mitigating the impact of the ongoing protest by Polish transport companies, costs €1,600 for each truck loaded onto a rail platform. According to Volodymyr Balin, the vice president of the Association of International Road Carriers, Ukrainian exporters are preparing for this shift in transport method.
Balin revealed that the first train, equipped with 23 wagons, departed on Dec. 4. The train, carrying oversized freight, was designed to transport trucks from Ukraine to Poland, where they would be unloaded and continue their journey via road.

Footage showing the trucks being transported on train platforms appeared on social media:

https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1732487270630895840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1732487270630895840%7Ctwgr%5E7a3a050629cb8300140c2bcc2d3189fa188d0bac%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Frmx.news%2Fpoland%2Fukrainians-load-their-trucks-onto-rail-cars-to-bypass-polish-trucker-blockade%2F

Russian airliner forced into emergency landing after engine fire

A Boeing 737 en route from Novosibirsk to Moscow made an emergency landing on Dec. 8 following an apparent engine fire, with Russian authorities reporting that all passengers emerged unharmed from the incident.

Kyiv Metro halts traffic as police investigate causes of a tunnel leak

Ukraine’s police are investigating the cause of a tunnel leak at the Demiivska subway station in Kyiv, the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office reported on Telegram on Dec. 8.

Ukraine says ICC arrest warrant for Putin helped return deported kids

KYIV, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Ukraine's human rights commissioner said on Friday that two arrest warrants issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another official over the unlawful wartime deportation of children to Russia had helped to return some of them.

Closing summary

• The Kremlin said on Friday that the idea Russia would engage in peace talks with Ukraine on Kyiv’s terms in 2024 was unrealistic. It was responding to a media report that said Washington wanted such a scenario to unfold, Reuters reported. Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, called the idea “absolutely unrealistic”.
  
  
• Vladimir Putin has said he will run for re-election in the March 2024 presidential poll, moving the longtime Russian leader a step closer to a fifth term in office. The announcement was widely expected and there is little question about the outcome.
  
  
• Ukrainian air defences shot down 14 out of 19 missiles fired by Russia during a morning air strike on Friday, Ukraine’s air force spokesman said. The missiles were shot down in the region outside Kyiv and the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, the military official, Yuryi Ihnat, said on television.
  
  
• A Russian missile attack killed one civilian and injured four others in Ukraine’s central region of Dnipropetrovsk on Friday, the region’s governor, Serhiy Lysak, said. “Unfortunately, one person is dead. Preliminarily, four people are wounded. They are all in hospital. Two people are in severe condition,” Lysak said on the Telegram messaging app.
  
  
• Ukraine has told residents to save energy after a power plant near the front line was hit by shelling, in the first such warning this winter. “This afternoon, the enemy attacked one of the thermal power plants in the front-line zone. The equipment was seriously damaged as a result of shelling,” the energy ministry said on Thursday. It did not say which plant was affected, but said that two of its power units had stopped working, leading to a “temporary shortage of electricity” in the grid.
  
  
• European Union leaders are conscious of how “existential” financial aid is to Ukraine and will honour their commitments, a senior official said on Friday, less than a week before a summit where billions in aid for Kyiv hang in the balance. Ahead of the year’s final summit of EU leaders in Brussels on the 14 and 15 December, Hungary has threatened to veto a proposal for the bloc to grant €50bn in budget aid to Kyiv through 2027, Reuters reported.
  
  
• The European Union’s executive is due to approve next week a legal proposal on using proceeds from Russian assets frozen under sanctions, but doubts in France, Germany and Belgium mean Ukraine would not get the money anytime soon, officials and diplomatic sources said. The draft law is expected on 12 December, two days before the year’s final summit of the EU’s 27 national leaders at which billions of much-needed budgetary and military aid for Kyiv are at stake, as well as advancing Ukraine’s membership bid.
  
  
• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has underscored Kyiv’s need for more air defence and the importance of EU unity in the run-up to a key summit next week. The Ukrainian leader said that during a call with Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, the leaders “discussed the importance of maintaining EU political and financial support for Ukraine, as well as EU unity in light of the expected [European Council] summit decisions to open accession negotiations and provide €50bn in support.”
  
  
• Ukraine’s farm ministry on Friday raised its 2023 grain harvest forecast to 59.7m tonnes, saying the country had a “record grain yield”. The total grain and oilseed harvest is expected to reach 81.3m tonnes, the ministry added in a statement.
  
  
• The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, urged US lawmakers to approve fresh aid for Ukraine, one day after Senate Republicans blocked a funding bill for Kyiv. “I’m not worried about the strength and unity and consensus and bravery of the Ukrainian people … I’m worried that we’re not going to do what we need to do,” Cameron told the Aspen Security Forum in the US capital.
  
  
• The Biden administration is considering getting behind new restrictions on who can seek asylum and an expanded deportation process to secure new aid for Ukraine and Israel in a supplemental funding bill, a source familiar with discussions told Reuters. The White House and Congress are racing to strike a deal that would deliver military aid to the two allied nations while discouraging illegal immigration across the US-Mexico border with only a week until lawmakers depart for a Christmas break.
  
  
• Emmanuel Macron, the French president, met Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, in a bid to break the deadlock ahead of an EU summit after the Hungarian leader threatened to block Ukraine’s accession talks. Macron welcomed Orbán at the Élysée Palace for a working dinner to discuss, according to the French presidency, “several subjects” on the agenda for the EU summit next week, including “various aspects of European support for Ukraine”.
  
  
• Ukraine began using train platforms to bypass a border blockade by Polish truck drivers, Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukraine’s rail network, said. The first train deployed in the operation moved 23 trucks across the border from Ukraine into Poland, a statement said.
  
  
• The UK and US accused Russian security services of engaging in a sustained cyber-espionage campaign against top politicians, journalists and NGOs. The UK foreign ministry said Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind “unsuccessful attempts to interfere in UK political processes” and said it had summoned Russia’s ambassador to London about the issue.
  
  
• Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, pledged $4.5bn to Ukraine, including $1bn in humanitarian aid to help support the war-torn country’s recovery effort in an online summit of leading industrial nations. The $1bn humanitarian aid includes funding for generators and other power supplies, as well as measures to clear mines planted by Russia, the foreign ministry said. The remaining $3.5bn includes funding for credit guarantees for World Bank loans to Ukraine.