Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 694

Summary for Thursday, 18th January 2024 - DAY 694

• Ukraine’s grain exports via the Black Sea have almost returned to prewar levels, it has been reported. “On average, we exported 7.5-8 million tonnes of grain monthly. Now we have crossed this threshold, and this means that capacity has almost been restored … what has been done is is very important,” said Leonid Kozachenko, the chair of the Ukrainian Agrarian Confederation, in remarks to Ukrainian radio that were quoted by the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
  
  
• Joe Biden has gathered congressional leaders at the White House to press them for $110bn in aid for Ukraine as the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, and his Democratic counterpart, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, sounded optimistic that a vote might be possible next week. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, pushed Biden for tougher US-Mexico border security measures in return.
  
  
• Ukrainian drones were launched into the Moscow and Leningrad regions early on Thursday, said Russia’s defence ministry, claiming the drones were intercepted.
  
  
• Russian missiles on Wednesday struck a town outside Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, killing one person and damaging an educational institution, said the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov, and the military. There were two strikes on the town of Chuhuyev, south-east of Kharkiv; a woman working at a heating and power plant was killed. Another person was injured. On Tuesday, two Russian missiles struck a residential district of Kharkiv, injuring 17 people.
  
  
• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged Ukraine and its people to show they hold the initiative in the war, in order to shore up international support.
  
  
• After returning home from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address: “Ukraine needs an ambitious and proactive perspective so that the initiative lies within our country, not with the enemy, so that the end of the war depends on Ukrainian actions. The world supports those who have a certain perspective. And that is the fundamental task – to maintain the initiative so that we have the opportunity to become stronger.”
  
  
• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said the priority for 2024 was to gain air superiority. “In 2024, of course the priority is to throw Russia from the skies,” Kuleba told the WEF.
  
  
• A top Nato military officer said the war in Ukraine could “determine the fate of the world” and western armies and political leaders must drastically change the way they help Kyiv fight Russia. The chair of the Nato military committee, Adm Rob Bauer, also said at a meeting of Nato’s senior officers in Brussels that behind Putin’s rationale for the war is a fear of democracy.
  
  
• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he doesn’t think a ceasefire in Ukraine is near, but he could see a future where Ukraine stands strongly on its own two feet. Blinken was in conversation with the WEF founder Klaus Schwab, and commentator Thomas Friedman in Davos.
  
  
• The British foreign secretary, David Cameron told delegates at the WEF in Davos, that there is a clear case for frozen Russian assets to be used to help pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
  
  
• Belgium does not oppose the confiscation of €280bn worth of frozen Russian central bank assets, but there needs to be a clear mechanism, such as using the assets as collateral for Ukraine, according to the prime minister, Alexander De Croo.
  
  
• The EU chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said she was “confident” of getting Hungary to drop its veto on a €50bn ($54bn) aid package for Ukraine at a summit in two weeks. Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orbán – Russia’s closest EU ally – refused in December to sign off on the assistance.
  
  
• Germany has delivered military supplies to Ukraine, including ammunition for Leopard 1 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles, drones and helmets. It also includes 16 Zetros tanker trucks, eight armoured personnel carriers, 50 mobile satellite terminals, 25 Heidrun reconnaissance drones and 1,840 helmets.
  
  
• Western companies supplied Russia with critical components worth $2.9bn in the first 10 months of 2023, despite sanctions on Moscow, the Ukrainian president’s office said.
  
  
• Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU, said it was investigating whether several employees of an investigative journalism outlet had been put under illegal surveillance after material posted online sought to implicate them in illicit drug use. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said exerting pressure on journalists was unacceptable. The video purported to show secret recordings of employees of the Bihus.info investigative journalism project.
  

Russian forces launched 33 drones at Ukraine overnight, says Kyiv

Romanian-Ukrainian border is being blocked by Romanian farmers, says Ukraine

Ukrainian drone attack hits oil terminal in St Petersburg, says Ukrainian military source

Estonia banishes Russian Orthodox leader as ‘security risk’

Schools in western Ukraine are rolling out rifle and pistol shooting practice using interactive software

Prykarpattia high school students will learn shooting on safe interactive systems at Defence of Ukraine classes.

These systems are mobile and consist of: multimedia equipment, software and samples of weapons.

Russian forces take control of Vesele in Ukraine‘s eastern Donetsk region, says Russian defence ministry

The Russian city of Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border cancelled its traditional Orthodox Epiphany festivities on Friday due to the threat of attacks as Kyiv’s forces pursue a new strategy

Russia has filed charges against 68 foreign 'mercenaries' for fighting for Ukraine

Russia has blamed separatist “traitors” from abroad who want to start a “partisan war” for the protests that took place on Wednesday in the small town of Baymak in Bashkortostan after local activist Fail Aslynov was jailed for four years.

Russian-annexed Crimea hit by power blackout

• 5 Onyks cruise missiles from the Bastion coastal missile system (Crimea);
  
  
• 3 Kh-22 air-launched cruise missiles – launched from Tu-22MZ aircraft (Black Sea);
  
  
• 4 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles – allegedly from a submarine (Black Sea);
  
  
• 5 Iskander-K land-launched cruise missiles (Crimea);
  
  
• 2 Iskander-M ballistic missiles (Crimea).
  

Closing Summary

• A Ukrainian drone attack hit an oil terminal in St Petersburg on Thursday as part of a “new phase” of in the region a Ukrainian military source told news agency Reuters. Reuters could not independently verify the statement but the Kyiv Independent had also reported the news.
  
  
• Russian forces have taken control of Vesele, a settlement in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry told Reuters on Thursday. The ministry provided no details about the settlement. Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield assertion.
  
  
• Ukraine has bought six Caesar howitzers, France’s defence minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Thursday. In Ukraine’s first purchase of French-made weapons since the start of the war, Lecornu said Kyiv had bought six for €3m-€4m ($3.3m -$4.4m) each.
  
  
• Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held his annual briefing on Thursday in Moscow. In the near three-hour long news conference, he said Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine had “brought about a certain purification of [Russian] society” and made it “healthier”. He also said Russia “can no longer trust the west”.
  
  
• Ukraine will not decide on conditions to end the conflict as “Washington is calling the shots” said Lavrov at his annual briefing in Moscow. On the security cooperation agreement recently announced by the UK and Ukraine, Lavrov called it a “half-baked product” containing no “legally binding agreements”. He added that not the “slightest interest” has been shown by the US and other western nations in ending the war.
  
  
• Lavrov claimed the US and other western countries were being surpassed by “emerging and strengthening centres of economic growth, financial power and political influence”, although he was not specific about which countries. Lavrov also said Russia’s relations with China were at “their best period in history”.
  
  
• Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán called for EU support to Ukraine to be reviewed annually. Orbán criticised “liberal” politicians for wanting “to give money to Ukraine over four years”, claiming it would be “anti-democratic” to do so just ahead of European parliament elections in June.
  
  
• Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas said Hungary was in talks with the EU about Ukraine aid but it was not certain an agreement would be reached. Failing that, he said, the EU’s other 26 members could reach a solution without Hungary.
  
  
• Russia has blamed separatist “traitors” from abroad who want to start a “partisan war” for the protests that took place on Wednesday in the small town of Baymak in Bashkortostan after local activist Fail Aslynov was jailed for four years.
  
  
• Estonia said it would not renew the residence permit of the head of the Estonian Orthodox church of the Moscow patriarchate, Metropolitan Eugene, saying the Russian national was “a security risk”.
  
  
• Nuclear envoys of South Korea, the US and Japan condemned North Korea for its arms trade with Russia, recent missile tests, and increasingly hostile rhetoric at a meeting in Seoul on Thursday. Japan’s envoy, Hiroyuki Namazu, condemed Pyongyang’s ballistic missile launch and said there must be close monitoring of what Russia may be providing to North Korea in return for armaments.
  
  
• Russian forces launched 33 Iranian-designed attack drones at Ukraine overnight, and fired guided missiles at its second largest city of Kharkiv in the east, said Ukraine’s air force on Thursday. It added that its air defence systems had downed 22 of the drones and that Russian forces had also fired two S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles from the Belgorod border region.
  
  
• Schools in western Ukraine are rolling out rifle and pistol shooting practice using interactive software, a regional official said. The governor of the western Ivano-Frankivsk region Svitlana Onyshchuk said: “Prykarpattia high school students will learn shooting on safe interactive systems at Defence of Ukraine classes.” She says the training will be introduced in three dozen schools in the western region.
  
  
• Russia has filed charges against 68 foreign mercenaries for fighting for Ukraine, according to the Russian state-run Tass news agency, which cites a statement sent by to it by Russia’s investigative committee (IC).
  
  
• Russian state prosecutors asked a Moscow court on Thursday to sentence prominent nationalist Igor Girkin to five years in prison for inciting extremism. Regarded in the west as a war criminal, Girkin has publicly accused Putin and top army officials of not pursuing the war in Ukraine harshly or effectively enough.
  
  
• Cyprus is making an “extremely important” contribution in increasing sanctions pressure on Moscow, Ukraine’s ambassador to the east Mediterranean island, Ruslan Nimchynskyi said on Thursday.
  
  
• The US and its allies are looking for a way to unfreeze $300bn in Russian central bank funds sitting mostly in Europe and use them for the benefit of Ukraine.
  
  
• Romanian farmers blocked a crossing on the Romanian-Ukrainian border on Thursday, Ukraine’s state customs service said. The Ukrainian state customs service said that traffic leaving Ukraine for trucks has been temporarily suspended to prevent passenger cars from being blocked.
  
  
• The Russian city of Belgorod, near the Ukrainian border cancelled its traditional Orthodox Epiphany festivities on Friday due to the threat of attacks as Kyiv’s forces pursue a new strategy.