Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 657

Summary for Tuesday, 12th December 2023 - DAY 757

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has flown to Washington DC, in an attempt to rescue a critical $61bn military aid package, while separately the UK hinted that it may increase the value of the arms, ammunition and training that it donates to Kyiv.
  
  
• Zelenskiy is due to meet the US president, Joe Biden, on Tuesday, as well as US senators and the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, at a time when Congress is holding up future US financial support for Kyiv’s war effort.
  
  
• Shortly after arriving in the US capital, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was counting on the US, and that delays to future rounds of military aid were “dreams come true” for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. “Putin must lose,” Zelenskiy said in a speech at the National Defense University. “You can count on Ukraine, and we hope just as much to be able to count on you.”
  
  
• Defence secretary Lloyd Austin, who introduced the Ukrainian president, said America’s commitment to Ukraine was unshakeable and supporting the war was critical to ensuring the security of the US and its allies.
  
  
• Russia’s air defence systems destroyed a Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile over the Belgorod region that was launched from Ukraine, the Russian defence ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry, in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, said the attack took place at about 5am (0200 GMT). It did not say whether there was any damage as a result.
  
  
• The International Monetary Fund’s executive board (IMF) on Monday approved a $900m disbursement for Ukraine from its $15.6bn loan programme, hours before the IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, met Zelenskiy.
  
  
• Alexei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader, has not been heard from for nearly a week and his lawyers have been unable to contact him, his supporters have said. On Monday, Navalny’s supporters said he again failed to appear by videoconference for a court hearing, with prison officials blaming a power outage. Later that day, Navalny’s lawyers were told he was no longer listed as a prisoner at IK-6, the penal colony where he has been incarcerated in the Vladimir region near Moscow.
  
  
• A decision to start talks on Ukraine’s EU accession is on a knife-edge after Hungary said it would not bow to mounting pressure to give the green light. Viktor Orbán’s threat to veto the launch of negotiations is being taken seriously, with Ukraine’s foreign minister warning of “devastating consequences” for his country if the talks are blocked.
  
  
• Russia will hold its presidential election in four annexed regions of Ukraine, Interfax news agency quoted the country’s central election commission as saying.
  
  
• Russian forces have unleashed a major offensive on Avdiivka, with 610 artillery shellings reported near the eastern Ukrainian town over the past day, according to the Ukrainian military.
  
  
• Britain has said it delivered two mine-hunting ships to Ukraine. The mine hunters, originally HMS Grimsby and HMS Shoreham, were renamed Chernihiv and Cherkasy in Glasgow in June, and will help Ukraine to maintain a critical route for merchant shipping travelling across the Black Sea.
  

Alexei Navalny's whereabouts in prison system remains unknown, says spokesperson

Today Alexey was again not taken to court via video, but now no one is talking nonsense about the “electrical accident”.
An employee of IK-6 stated that Alexey “left their colony,” but allegedly did not know where he was transferred.

'Highly worrying' that Alexei Navalny has 'been missing for a week', says EU foreign affairs chief

Russian forces have 'advanced significantly' in southern Ukraine, says Moscow authorities

Russian forces in southern Ukraine have “advanced considerably” around the village of Novopokrovka in the Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow’s occupational authorities have said.
“Our units have advanced significantly forward north-east of Novopokrovka,” the Moscow-installed head of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, wrote on Telegram.
Novopokrovka lies about 12 miles east of Robotyne, which Kyiv said it recaptured in the summer but has since struggled to keep.
Balitsky said Russian forces are “not only holding the line but are gradually moving forward”. These claims are yet to be independently verified.

Gyunduz Mamedov, a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, said 597 shells were fired in the Kherson region over the last 24 hours

Pro-Ukrainian partisans infiltrate base of Russian assault regiment in occupied Crimea

Summary of the day so far...

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is in Washington today, where later he will meet Joe Biden as well as US senators and the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, at a time when Congress is holding up future American financial support for Kyiv’s war effort.
  
  
• Poland will demand the full mobilisation of the free world to help Ukraine, the newly appointed prime minister, Donald Tusk said. He said: “We will demand full mobilisation of the west to help Ukraine. I can no longer listen to politicians who talk about being tired of the situation in Ukraine.”
  
  
• Russian forces in southern Ukraine have “advanced considerably” around the village of Novopokrovka in the Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow’s occupational authorities have said. “Our units have advanced significantly forward north-east of Novopokrovka,” the Moscow-installed head of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, wrote on Telegram.
  
  
• The whereabouts of Alexei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader, inside the prison system remains unknown and he again did not show up at a court hearing by video link, Kira Yarmysh, his spokesperson, said on Tuesday. The EU’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, later said it was “highly worrying” that Navalny was reported to have been missing for seven days.
  

Ukraine’s biggest mobile network operator victim of major cyber-attack

The IT infrastructure of Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile network provider, was “partially destroyed” by a large cyber-attack on Tuesday

(The attack) significantly damaged the (IT) infrastructure, limited access, we could not counter it at the virtual level, so we shut down Kyivstar physically to limit the enemy’s access.

'Too much sadness’: asylum seekers in Finland caught in geopolitical drama

Finland’s government has said it will reopen two crossings on its long border with Russia later this week after closing all eight roads between the two countries in late November to prevent an influx of asylum seekers.
“Without dismantling the restrictions, we cannot verify whether a change for the better is taking place. If the phenomenon continues, we will close these border crossing points,” prime minister Petteri Orpo told journalists.
Last month, Finland shut the Russian border until 13 December to block a rising number of refugees from arriving in the Nordic nation in what the government and its allies said was an orchestrated move by Moscow.
The Guardian’s Nordic correspondent, Miranda Bryant, has spoken to one of the asylum seekers caught in the geopolitical drama who crossed from Russia after a treacherous journey from Syria.

Ukraine’s intelligence agency said the cyber-attack on the country’s biggest mobile operator, Kyivstar, may be a Russian special services operation

Air raid alert system in Kyiv region affected by Kyivstar cyber-attack, says regional military administration

RIP | Tributes paid to Irish man killed in Ukraine fighting alongside Ukrainian Army

He was originally from Raheny in north Dublin but moved to the United States in 2000 and became a dual Irish-American citizen.

Graham Dale (45) is understood to have died last Friday, December 8, while fighting for the Ukrainian Army.

A Dublin man who previously fought with the US Marines during the Iraq war has been killed in conflict in Ukraine.

Graham Dale (45) is understood to have died last Friday, December 8, while fighting for the Ukrainian Army.
He was originally from Raheny in north Dublin but moved to the United States in 2000 and became a dual Irish-American citizen.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said they were aware of the death and were providing consular assistance.
“As with all consular cases, the Department does not comment on the details of individual cases,” the spokesperson added.
The details of how he was killed or in what part of the country his death occurred have not yet been released.
Following the September 11 terror attacks he enlisted in the Marines and later served on a number of tours in Iraq.
His time in combat was detailed in the book ‘The Green Marine: An Irishman’s War in Iraq’.
The book, written with Sunday World journalist Neil Fetherstonhaugh, was based on a journal of his deployment in the country and published in 2009.
Mr Dale later relocated to Cedar Park, a suburb in Austin, Texas, where he worked as a computer network engineer.
Following the outbreak of the Ukraine-Russian war he travelled to Poland to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees fleeing the violence.However, in an interview with a US television station in May 2022, the Marine veteran said he felt compelled to assist Ukrainian forces.
“This is somewhere that I’ve been to on vacation before. To me, this is an attack on all of Europe,” he said of the Russian offensive.
“And I felt compelled with my current skillset and so forth that I could help in anyway I could,” he added.
Tributes have been paid to the Dubliner with one friend, Christina Isaac, sharing her devastation of the news.
“It is with a heavy heart that I share the passing of my dear friend, Graham Dale,” she wrote on Facebook.
“If you knew Graham, you might already be aware that, when the conflict in Ukraine began, he flew over to offer his assistance.
"He eventually joined the Ukrainian Army and tragically lost his life on Friday, December 8. Currently, I lack further details, but he left this earth exactly the way he wanted to. His remains are being transported back to his homeland in Ireland.
“This absolutely breaks my heart. He was a great guy. Thank you for putting out the information. He will definitely be missed,” another person wrote.
She also described him as a “sweet and kind” man who had a rough exterior as well as a huge heart.
In his book, Graham Dale detailed how he grew up in Raheny and secured a Green card before moving to Texas. He was volunteering with a Texan fire department when two planes hit the World Trade centre on 9/11.
“That day was the catalyst," he told the Irish Independent in 2008.
"To know that firemen and innocent people had been murdered, kids orphaned. I'm a very reactive person. I take things personally. Even when I was a child, if one kid was hitting another kid I felt a moral duty to say 'stop that'. I really never subscribed to the idea that it's someone else's job to look after things."
Speaking about enlisting with the Marines, he said: “They looked at me sideways. One of the guys asked me, 'are you lost?' but I found it surprisingly easy to sign up. Recruiting stations in America are like McDonald's, they seem to be on every corner."
He served in Iraq where, in 2005, his platoon was hit by a suicide bomber and one of his friends was killed. The experience left him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
"When my friend got killed that was the hardest. It's still difficult. Things like that just don't happen every day,” he later said of the incident.

A number of other Irish men have also been killed while fighting in the Ukraine war.
In April, Finbar Cafferky (40s), from Achill Island, died while fighting in the east of the country.
Mr Cafferky had previously fought with an arm of the Syrian Democratic Forces against ISIS.He took part in the Shell to Sea protests against the Corrib Gas project and, in later years, worked in Copenhagen on a construction project.
The previous September Rory Mason (25), from County Meath, died while fighting with the International Legion for the Defence of Ukraine in the Kharkiv region.
In a statement after his death the Mason family said: "Rory was a private young man of drive, purpose and conviction.“Those who fought alongside Rory speak of ‘a truly brave and courageous man who could have left at any time but chose not to".

The Guardian's sum-up of the Ukrainian president's press conference today with Joe Biden

• Zelenskiy and Biden reiterated their belief that the US should pass a significant supplemental aid package for Ukraine in its war with Russia, but acknowledged that Republicans on Capitol Hill are holding that process up as they seek concessions from Biden and Democrats on immigration policy and particularly the southern border.
  
  
• That, of course, was the position coming into the press conference, after Zelenskiy went to the Hill and met senators and the House speaker, Mike Johnson.
  
  
• Biden has ordered $200m in aid from the Pentagon via a “drawdown”, a process to provide ammunition, missiles and more swiftly to allies in need.
  
  
• Neither leader was drawn into making dire predictions about what a second term for Donald Trump might mean for Ukraine.
  
  
• Biden, of course, had no good news for Zelenskiy on membership of Nato.
  
  
• But the US president did get off a zinger, of a sort, when he highlighted praise for Republicans by a Russian TV host and said: “If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you’re doing. History … will judge harshly.”