Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 662

Summary for Sunday, 17th December 2023 - DAY 662

• Air defence systems destroyed nine Iran-made attack drones over Odesa, governor Oleh Kiper said on the Telegram messaging app, calling it the third Russian air assault on the region in the past week.
  “However, one of the downed drones fell into a residential area in Odesa district and exploded,” Kiper said, adding that several houses were damaged and one person was found dead in one of them afterwards.
  
  
• Ukraine air force reports its defence systems destroyed a cruise missile in addition to the drones. It said, without providing details, that Russia also launched an Iskander ballistic missile that “did not reach” its target.
  The Russian air weapons were destroyed over Odesa, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Khmelnitskyi regions.
  
  
• Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria plan to sign a deal in January on a joint plan to clear mines floating in the Black Sea as a result of the war in Ukraine, Turkish defence minister Yasar Guler said on Saturday, after months of talks between the Nato allies. Speaking to reporters at a meeting in Ankara, Guler said the “Trilateral Initiative” would only include Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria for now, and their defence ministers planned to hold a signing ceremony in Istanbul on 11 January.
  
  
• A third Ukrainian truck driver has died in blockades at the Polish border staged by Polish truckers, Ukraine’s Suspilne public broadcaster said on Saturday.
  Suspilne, quoting an official from Ukraine’s international trucking association, said the driver took ill at the Krakivets-Korczowa crossing – one of four points affected by the protests. He died while being taken to a hospital. Two truckers died last month after becoming snared in the blockades.
  
  
• Moldovan president Maia Sandu hailed the adoption by parliament of a new defence strategy calling for anchoring Moldova alongside its western allies and identifying Russia as a threat to the former Soviet state. Sandu posted on Facebook two days after the European Union agreed to open talks on extending its membership with both Moldova and neighbouring Ukraine – more than 21 months into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
  
  
• Hungary will veto Bulgaria’s entry into Europe’s passport-free Schengen Zone unless it scraps a transit tax on Russian gas, the Hungarian foreign ministry said on Saturday. The veto threat follows Thursday’s agreement among all 27 European Union members except Hungary to start accession talks with Ukraine despite its invasion by Russia, bypassing prime minister Viktor Orbán’s grievances by getting him to leave the room.
  
  
• Vladimir Putin will run for president again as an independent candidate with a wide support base but not on a party ticket, Russian news agencies reported on Saturday, citing his supporters. An initiative group made up of over 700 politicians and figures from the sporting and cultural worlds met on Saturday in Moscow and unanimously endorsed Putin’s nomination as an independent candidate, Russian news agencies said.
  
  
• The Ukrainian air force said Saturday that it had repelled a Russian drone attack overnight, shooting down 30 of 31 drones launched by Moscow. The attack targeted regions including the capital Kyiv, the southern region of Kherson as well as the western Khmelnytsky region.
  
  
• A Ukrainian missile attack on a Russian-held village in southern Ukraine killed two people, Moscow’s occupying authorities in the Kherson region said on Saturday. Moscow’s forces said the missile hit the village of Nova Mayachka, on the Russian-occupied bank of the Dnipro river and located 70 kilometres (40 miles) east of the Ukrainian-held city of Kherson.
  

Russian isolation is taking a toll on Arctic climate science

In the Arctic, as in the rest of the world, Western and Russian researchers have cut almost all ties since the start of the war in Ukraine. The exchange of data from Russia has now completely dried up.
Moscow’s February 2022 invasion was the final nail in the coffin of cooperation, already in decline in recent decades amid president Vladimir Putin’s more aggressive policies.
The deep freeze has significantly affected scientific research in a region warming around four times faster than the planet as a whole, and which is therefore crucial to climate studies – and where Russia plays a major role due to its vast size.
“It’s damaging because Russia is more than half of the Arctic,” said Rolf Rodven, executive secretary of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP).

Putin says Biden's comments about Russia attacking Nato country 'complete nonsense'

Drones attack Russia’s tactical bomber base in Rostov Oblast

Russia’s MoD claims to have repelled a massive UAV attack from Ukraine, allegedly intercepting and destroying 33 suicide drones. Local sources say one of the attack’s main targets was a bomber air base near Rostov’s Morozovsk.

“Air defense assets on duty destroyed and intercepted 33 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the territories of the Lipetsk, Rostov and Volgograd Oblast,” Russia’s MoD said, later adding that two of those were allegedly downed in the skies of Volgograd Oblast, which is at least 300 km away from the war zone.

Putin warns of 'problems' to come on Finland-Russia border after Helsinki joins Nato

The toll of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine laid bare

A Ukrainian military drone unit near Stepove, a village just north of Avdiivka, where some of the most intense battles have taken place, shot the video this month.
It’s an apocalyptic scene: In two separate clips, the bodies of about 150 soldiers — most wearing Russian uniforms — lie scattered along tree lines where they sought cover. The village itself has been reduced to rubble. Rows of trees that used to separate farm fields are burned and disfigured. The fields are pocked by artillery shells and grenades dropped from drones. The drone unit said it’s possible that some of the dead were Ukrainians.
The footage was provided to the AP by Ukraine’s BUAR unit of the 110th Mechanized Brigade, involved in the fighting in the area. The unit said that the footage was shot on 6 December over two separate treelines between Stepove and nearby railroad tracks and that many of the bodies had been left there for weeks.
The AP verified the location by comparing the video with maps and other drone footage of the same area shot six days later by the 47th Mechanized Brigade.

Russia continued to batter Ukrainian targets with mortars overnight, with Dnipropetrovsk in the centre, Sumy in the north and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast hit with artillery

‘I’m not sure I fully trust anyone who stayed’: Ukrainian city split by suspicion a year after Russian retreat

In the Ukrainian city of Izium, which faced Russian occupation for five months, the walls that remain standing are often daubed with white paint. They are graffitied with the number of the Ukrainian SBU security service, to provide information about what happened during the occupation, in a city still wracked with suspicion and distrust.

A bird’s-eye view of the city. Photograph: Libkos/Getty Images

Often, when Kostiantyn Grygorenko walks the streets of Izium, he spots people he suspects collaborated with the Russians during the five-month occupation of his home town last year.
He used to feel an overwhelming rush of emotions when he saw them. Now, he tries to conserve his energy and nerves and ignore them. But still, it gets to him.
“These people are walking around the town, living among us, and they think they’re not guilty of anything. But I think they’re criminals and should go to jail,” said Grygorenko, editor-in-chief of the local weekly newspaper Izium Horizons.
More than a year after the Russians retreated from Izium, much of the city is still in ruins. More than 5,000 houses and 120 apartment blocks have been damaged or destroyed. Schools, bridges and other critical infrastructure remain out of action. “Renovation work will take a decade, and that’s in the absolute best-case scenario,” the city’s mayor, Valerii Marchenko, said in an interview at his temporary office. His old office building, like so much of central Izium, remains gutted.
As well as the material destruction, the 160 days of Russian occupation left an insidious psychological legacy that may take just as long to heal. It’s hinted at by the phone number daubed on walls throughout the town in white paint. The number is for a hotline run by the Ukrainian SBU security service, an invitation to provide information on who did what during the dark days of occupation.
So far, the SBU has opened cases against 30 people in Izium for collaboration, and sent 24 indictments to court, the agency said in a statement. Some people, including a headteacher who agreed to cooperate with the Russians, are in detention awaiting trial. But nobody doubts that more than 30 local people helped the Russians run the town.

A Ukrainian military intelligence officer is undertaking sabotage missions in Russia that he claims do not have the approval of his superiors

Mykola is an officer in the main intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s defence ministry. He trains operatives for secret missions in Russia: sabotage, poisonings, assassinations, diversions. He claims they are unauthorised by the chain of command above him.

Last week, he invited me to his training centre in south-east Ukraine, a place so secret that before we even got in his car, I had to switch off my phone and seal it in a bag that blocks out all signals.
Mykola (not his real name) proudly displayed small metal bullseye targets with photographs of President Putin, the Russian chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov and the defence minister Sergey Shoigu, as well as a few Russian propagandists.

Mykola says that his missions are neither ordered nor sanctioned by the head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov. … There was no way of independently verifying this claim, and if the operations really are off the books, they offer perfectly plausible deniability for activities that Ukraine’s Nato backers fear could fuel Moscow’s allegations that they are supporting attacks on Russian soil.

Mykola refused to give details of specific operations his men carry out. “Most of them are too low-key to make the headlines, mainly because the Kremlin is keen to keep quiet about the humiliation of Ukrainian special ops commandos roaming around Russian countryside.” When pressed, his only concession was that “men like him” were behind the drones that targeted the Kremlin in May last year. “We also have Russians inside Russia who help us, people who see how senseless this war is and hate the criminal regime,” he said.

Some of the latest photos coming out of the war zone this weekend:

Russia and Ukraine traded dozens of attack drones on Sunday, with at least one Ukrainian civilian killed, as aerial drone warfare continues to form a critical element of the fighting.

At least 35 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight over three regions in southwestern Russia, the Russian defence ministry said in a post on the messaging app Telegram.

A Russian airbase hosting bomber aircraft used in Ukraine was among the targets, according to a Russian Telegram channel critical of the Kremlin. The channel posted short videos of drones flying over low-rise housing in what it claimed was the Russian town of Morozovsk, whose air base is home to Russia’s 559th Bomber Aviation Regiment.

Vasily Golubev, the governor of Russia’s Rostov province, separately reported “mass drone strikes” near Morozovsk and another town farther west, but did not mention the airbase. Golubev said most the drones were shot down and and there were no casualties. He did not comment on damage.

Also on Sunday morning, Ukraine’s air force said it shot down 20 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched overnight by Russian troops in southern and western Ukraine, as well as one X-59 cruise missile launched from the country’s occupied south.

A civilian was killed overnight near Odesa, a key port on Ukraine’s southern Black Sea coast, after the remnants of a destroyed drone fell on his house, Ukraine’s military said.

The has been a step-up in drone attacks over the past month as both sides are keen to show they are not deadlocked as the war approaches the two-year mark. Russia’s defence ministry on Friday evening said its anti-aircraft units destroyed 32 Ukrainian drones over the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine’s air force on Saturday said it had shot down 30 out of 31 drones launched by Russia against 11 Ukrainian regions the previous night.

Russian rocket forces have loaded a new Yars intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo at the Kozelsk base south-west of Moscow

The defence ministry released a clip of the giant missile being transported to a silo and loaded into a shaft. It accompanied the video with pounding rock music.

Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, closely followed by the United States. Together, Russia and the US control more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Russia has about 5,889 nuclear warheads while the US has about 5,244, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Of those, Russia and the United States each have about 1,670 strategic nuclear warheads deployed.

When Moscow launched its largescale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, western powers imposed strict sanctions and western companies began pulling out of Russia.

Mr. Putin has turned the exits of major western companies into a windfall for Russia’s loyal elite and the state itself. He has forced companies wishing to sell to do so at fire-sale prices. He has limited sales to buyers anointed by Moscow. Sometimes he has seized firms outright.
A New York Times investigation traced how Putin has turned an expected misfortune into an enrichment scheme. Western companies that have announced departures have declared more than $103 billion in losses since the start of the war, according to a Times analysis of financial reports. Putin has squeezed companies for as much of that wealth as possible by dictating the terms of their departure.
He has also subjected those exits to ever-increasing taxes, generating at least $1.25 billion in the past year for Russia’s war chest.
No private deal is safe. The Dutch beer company Heineken, for example, found a buyer this spring and set a price. But the Russian government unilaterally rejected the deal, people close to the negotiations said, and put the company’s Russian holdings in the hands of an aerosol-packaging titan married to a former Russian senator.
In all, Putin has overseen one of the biggest transfers of wealth within Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Huge swaths of industries — elevators, tires, industrial coatings and more — are now in the hands of increasingly dominant Russian players.

Combat clashes occur in Belgorod Oblast in Russia, Russian stronghold destroyed

The Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (GUR) has reported that combat clashes had occurred near the settlement of Terebreno in Belgorod Oblast in Russia, and a stronghold of the Russian forces has been destroyed.

• Russian officials claim that Russia’s air defence intercepted or downed 33 drones on the night of 16-17 December.
  
• Russian media claimed that the drones attempted to attack a military airfield in the town of Morozovsk, where frontline aircraft are stationed.
  
  
• An anonymous source told Ukrainska Pravda that Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence was involved in drone attacks on Russia’s Lipetsk and Volgograd oblasts on the night of 16-17 December.
  
  
• Ukraine’s Armed Forces and Security Service carried out a special operation on the night of 16-17 December, striking Russian military equipment at an airfield in Russia's Rostov Oblast.
  

Locals terrified as Ukraine war crosses into Russia

According to Ukrainian intelligence, combat clashes occurred near the village of Terebreno in the Belgorod region of Russia, resulting in losses for Russian forces.

“The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine confirms that clashes occurred near the village of Terebreno in Russia Belgorod Oblast. As a result of an attack carried out by opponents of the Kremlin regime, a platoon stronghold of Russian forces was destroyed,” Ukraine’s military intelligence reported.

25 Russian attacks were repelled on Avdiivka front on 17 December

On 17 December, 54 combat clashes occurred in the combat zone; the biggest number of attacks was repelled on the Avdiivka front – 25.

• On the Volyn and Polissia fronts, there have been no significant changes to the operational situation.
  
  
• On the Siversk and Slobozhanshchyna fronts, over 20 settlements were attacked from artillery and mortars by the Russians including Kliusy in Chernihiv Oblast; Volfyne, Hrabovske and Zapsillia in Sumy Oblast; Vovchansk, Vovchanski Khutory and Topoli in Kharkiv Oblast.
  
  
• On the Kupiansk front, the Russians, supported by aircraft were trying to breach the defence of the Ukrainian forces, but to no avail. The Defence Forces of Ukraine repelled six Russian attacks near the settlement of Synkivka and to the east of Petropavlivka in Kharkiv Oblast. About 10 settlements were under artillery and mortar fire of the Russians, mainly Dvorichna, Synkivka, Petropavlivka, Ivanivka in Kharkiv Oblast.
  
  
• On the Lyman front, the Defence Forces repelled eight Russian attacks near the settlement of Makiivka in Luhansk Oblast and to the east of Terny in Donetsk Oblast. The Russians also launched an airstrike near the settlement of Zvanivka in Donetsk Oblast. Over 10 settlements were attacked from Russian artillery and mortars, including Bilohorivka in Luhansk Oblast and Torske, Serebrianka, Verkhnokamianske, Spirne in Donetsk Oblast.
  
  
• On the Bakhmut front, the Defence Forces repelled five attacks by the Russians near the settlements of Bohdanivka, Klishchiivka and Andriivka in Donetsk Oblast. About 10 settlements, specifically Bohdanivka, Chasiv Yar, Ivanivske, Andriivka in Donetsk Oblast, were under Russian artillery and mortar attacks.
  
  
• On the Avdiivka front, the Russians supported by aircraft were trying to breach the defence of the Ukrainian forces, but to no avail. Specifically, 15 Russian attacks were repelled near the settlements of Novobakhmutivka, Stepove, Avdiivka and 10 more to the south of Tonenke, Nevelske and Pervomaiske in Donetsk Oblast. The Russians also launched an airstrike near the settlement of Novobakhmutivka in Donetsk Oblast. Over 10 settlements including Stepove, Lastochkyne, Avdiivka, Pervomaiske in Donetsk Oblast were attacked from artillery and mortars.
  
  
• On the Marinka front, the Defence Forces continue to deter the Russians near the settlement of Novomykhailivka in Donetsk Oblast. Here the Russians supported by aircraft launched four unsuccessful attacks on the positions of the Ukrainian forces. The settlements of Krasnohorivka, Heorhiivka, Marinka, Pobieda and Novomykhailivka were under artillery and mortar fire from the Russians.
  
  
• On the Shakhtarsk front, the Russians were not conducting offensive (assault) actions. About 10 settlements, mainly Urozhaine, Staromaiorske, Rivnopil in Donetsk Oblast were attacked from artillery and mortars.
  
  
• On the Zaporizhzhia front, the Defence Forces repelled three attacks by the Russians to the west of the settlements of Verbove and Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. About 20 settlements were attacked from artillery and mortars, including Poltavka, Malynivka, Huliaipole, Charivne, Mala Tokmachka, Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
  
  
• On the Kherson front, the Russians attacked the settlements of Kherson, Darivka, Antonivka, Kizomys in Kherson Oblast, and Ochakiv in Mykolaiv Oblast from artillery. Airstrikes were launched near Krynky and Olhivka.
  

Closing Summary

• Russian president Vladimir Putin vowed to make Russia a “sovereign, self-sufficient” power in the face of the west. In a campaign speech he accused the west of unsuccessfully trying to “sow internal troubles” in Russia.
  
  
• Putin also warned of “problems” with neighbouring Finland after it joined Nato earlier this year. Russia plans to reorganise military divisions to station more troops in its north-west region, by the EU and Nato border.
  
  
• But Putin dismissed US president Joe Biden’s claims that Russia could attack a Nato country as “nonsense”. It came after Biden said Putin would not stop at Ukraine if it secures victory, as he pleaded with Republican lawmakers to authorise further aid to Kyiv.
  
  
• Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington DC last week has yet to bear fruit as Biden called lack of Congressional support for aid a “Christmas gift” to Russia. Biden has requested $61.4bn (£48.4bn) in further aid to Ukraine but Republicans in Republicans in Congress have rejected the proposals.
  
  
• Russia is not interested in extending the Black Sea grain deal, the agriculture minister said. The deal led to 33m tonnes of grain leave Ukraine’s ports before it collapsed in July.
  
  
• Ukraine claims Russia has suffered almost 350,000 troops dying or being injured. The figure is higher than the 315,000 estimated by US intelligence, according to reports, but even that represents a significant toll for Moscow.
  
  
• Ukraine continued its use of ‘memetic warfare’ as the defence ministry posted a video of two Russian tanks being destroyed, with guitar music and the caption “WELCOME TO UKRAINE.” Scholars have tracked the use of memes to try and grab control of the war narrartive.
  
  
• An intelligence report from the UK Ministry of Defence said Russia is likely to deploy “electoral fraud and voter intimidation” when elections take place in occupied Ukrainian territories. Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will vote in March’s presidential elections but they are expected to not be “free or fair”.
  
  
• It comes as Vladimir Putin was confirmed to be running for president again as an independent candidate in Russia after two decades in power. Russian news agencies reported the news on Saturday, with the victory of Putin, 71, a formality.
  
  
• Russia continued to batter Ukrainian targets with mortars overnight, with Dnipro in the centre, Sumy in the north and Zaporizhzhia in the south-east hit with artillery.
  
  
• Russian rocket forces have loaded a new Yars intercontinental ballistic missile into a silo at the Kozelsk base south-west of Moscow. The missiles are capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads.
  
  
• More than a year after the Russians retreated from Izium, the Ukrainian city is wracked by suspicion and distrust about collaborators. Read Shaun Walker’s Observer dispatch from a city still in ruins here.
  
  
• Lorry blockades are continuing at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Polish drivers say Ukraine is undercutting them as about 2,150 Ukrainian lorries remain stuck in Poland unable to return.