Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 707

Summary for Wednesday, 31st January 2024 - DAY 707

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked his most senior military commander, Gen Valerii Zaluzhnyi, to step down but the popular general refused, triggering speculation that he might be dismissed by the president amid tensions between them. Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian opposition MP and ally of the general, told the Guardian that he understood that “yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so”.
  
  
• Ukraine will soon receive the first big batch of long-range missiles made by Boeing and Saab that promise to extend its range deep into Russian-held territory, according to reports. Ukraine needs the ground launched small diameter bomb (GLSDB) to supplement its 100-mile Atacms rockets from the US.
  
  
• EU nations have decided to approve an outline deal that would deliver Ukraine the taxes and profits from hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian central bank assets that have been frozen outside Russia because of its war against Ukraine. It is seen as a first step towards using the Russian assets – there are also calls to seize the entire sum outright for Ukraine’s benefit.
  
  
• Peers have criticised the UK government for failing to agree a deal with the former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to spend £2.5bn from his sale of the London football club.
  
  
• EU leaders will meet on Thursday hoping to approve €50bn in support for Ukraine over the solitary opposition of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
  
  
• Russian attack drones hit Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, on Tuesday, slightly injuring three people, triggering a fire and causing damage to apartment blocks and infrastructure, local officials said.
  
  
• Ukraine said it had carried out a successful cyber-attack that knocked out a server used by Russia’s defence ministry, temporarily disrupting communications for military units.
  
  
• Ukraine is likely to face a tough year fighting Russia in 2024, the CIA director, Bill Burns, has written in Foreign Policy, arguing that to cut off US aid would be an error of “historic proportions”.
  
  
• The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said on Tuesday that European countries must get ready to help Ukraine keep fighting “over the long term”, with or without American help. “If the United States were to make a sovereign choice to stop or reduce this aid, it should have no impact on the ground.”
  
  
• The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, has said he expects Russia’s offensive on the eastern frontline to fizzle out by early spring. He credited them with only “a few advances across some fields” and near Avdiivka. “Now it’s the enemy’s move. It will end, and I think ours will start.”
  
  
• A Ukrainian military spy official said on Tuesday that Russia was showing no willingness to return the bodies of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war that it said died in a military plane crash in the Belgorod region last week. Russia has produced no proof there were Ukrainian prisoners on the plane.
  
  
• The Ukrainian government submitted to parliament on Tuesday an amended version of its bill to tighten army mobilisation rules. The parliament rejected the previous draft amid public outcry. A key provision in the legislation is a lowering to 25 from 27 the minimum age for the draft. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the army needs 450,000-500,000 more personnel.
  

The UN’s top court will hand down its verdict today in a case brought by Ukraine against Russia for alleged terrorism financing and racial discrimination after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Beginning in 2014, Russia illegally occupied Crimea and then engaged in a campaign of cultural erasure, taking aim at ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars.

Explosion rocks St. Petersburg oil refinery in reported Ukraine intel’s attack

In the early hours of 31 January, a drone hit an oil refinery in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and the Baltic Sea port, in a reported Ukrainian intelligence-orchestrated attack.

Drone strike on St. Petersburg oil refinery on 31 January. Photo: Russian Telegram channels

An explosion rocked the Nevsky Mazut oil refinery in the Baltic Sea port of St. Petersburg, Russia early on 31 January, according to Russian Telegram channels and local authorities. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) was behind the attack, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s intelligence sources.
Russian outlets such as Fontanka claim a Ukrainian drone struck oil tanks at the facility around 4:50 a.m. local time, additionally damaging some cars. Earlier air traffic restrictions were imposed at Pulkovo Airport between 3:53 a.m. and 5:11 a.m. due to the presence of an unknown object in the area’s airspace. According to Ukrainska Pravda’s HUR source, Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems tried to shoot down an incoming drone but failed. The oil refinery is approximately 850 km from the Ukrainian border.
St. Petersburg Governor Beglov claims no casualties or significant property damage from the incident, while local media outlets are reporting fires at oil storage tanks.
Previously, Ukraine successfully attacked one of the largest St. Petersburg oil depots with an indigenous drone on 18 January. The recent events continue a series of strikes across the Russian oil facilities in the Krasnodar, Leningrad, Tambov, and Bryansk oblasts, disrupting Russian logistics and industrial operations.
Russian oil infrastructure in the Baltic Sea ports is crucial to the country’s oil exports, responsible for nearly 60% of the sea-transported international oil shipments. According to Bloomberg, Russia’s net oil revenues of $11.3 billion in October 2023 accounted for 31% of the nation’s overall net budget revenue for the month.
The attacks aim to deprive the Kremlin of the revenue it uses to finance the war. Another goal of such Ukrainian attacks is to incapacitate essential infrastructure involved in the war effort, as Russian refineries are actively providing their products to meet the demands of their military forces.

Explosions ring out in several cities of occupied Crimea, smoke showing over Belbek airfield

Explosions were heard in the cities of Sevastopol, near Saky, Feodosiia, Rozdilne and Hvardiiske in occupied Crimea on the afternoon of 31 January. Russian occupation authorities issued an air-raid warning and suspended traffic on the Crimean bridge.

Source: Suspilne (Ukraine's public broadcaster) with reference to local residents; Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-appointed head of occupied Crimea; Krym.Realii, a Radio Liberty project
 
Details: Suspilne said, with reference to local residents, that explosions had been heard in Sevastopol and near the town of Saky in Yevpatoriia district.

Before that, the occupation authorities of the city issued an air-raid warning and suspended traffic on the Crimean bridge.

Update: Krym.Realii stated, citing Russian and Crimean Telegram channels, that there were explosions in Feodosiia, Rozdilne and Hvardiiske. Russian Telegram channels reported the possible operation of Russian air defence systems. The occupation authorities of Crimea have not yet commented on the situation.
Photos and videos of inversion trails in the sky over the Simferopol district are being posted on Crimean and Russian social media. Krym.Realii reports on five explosions in Sevastopol resembling the work of air defence systems. The occupation authorities in Crimea have confirmed the operation of air defence systems.
Russian occupation authorities in Crimea reported the downing of a target near Liubymivka (northern part of Sevastopol). It is stated that the debris fell on the "wasteland" near the village. Local Telegram channels published photos and videos showing smoke over the settlement – particularly, over the Belbek airfield.
At 17:29, Russian occupation authorities reported that their "air defence systems were still responding to an attack." It was stated that pieces of a downed missile fell in a private sector near Fedorivska Street.

Ukraine’s air defences shot down 14 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that injured one person and damaged commercial buildings

Russia's defence minister orders military manufacturers to increase production

Listen, stop fooling around here, guys. We got busy with this in 2022. We should have had these machines operating at full capacity in 2023.
I’d like to receive within a week a specific proposal on how we’ll reach the indicators set by the president (Vladimir Putin) ... this must be done, because all these orders are connected with the performance of very specific work on the battlefield.

Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners of war, Moscow announces

The Russian defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday it had completed an exchange deal with Ukraine under which each side got 195 soldiers back and that its own soldiers would be flown to Moscow to receive medical and psychological treatment.
It was cited by the RIA state news agency as saying that the United Arab Emirates had played a role in brokering the deal.
“On January 31, as a result of the negotiation process, 195 Russian servicemen who were in mortal danger in captivity were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In return, exactly 195 prisoners from the armed forces of Ukraine were handed over,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
It was the first such exchange since the crash of a Russian military transport plane last week that Moscow says was carrying 65 Ukrainian soldiers ahead of a planned exchange.
Russia says Ukraine shot down the plane with a ground-to-air missile and that all 74 people on board were killed.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that it downed the plane, and has demanded proof of who was on board.

Russia and Ukraine have conducted a major prisoner-of-war exchange just one week after a previous swap was scuttled when a Russian Il-76 transport plane was shot down and exploded in a fiery crash along the border

Our people are back. 207 of them. We return them home no matter what.

We remember each Ukrainian in captivity. Both warriors and civilians. We must bring all of them back. We are working on it. The Ukrainian team has done another excellent job.

The United Nations’ top court will rule today on whether Russia violated an anti-terrorism treaty by funding pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, including those who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014.

Putin asks for international investigation into Belgorod plane downing

Turkey and Ukraine have signed an accord that will allow Turkish construction firms to take part in the reconstruction of Ukrainian infrastructure damaged amid Russia’s invasion, the two countries said on Wednesday.

This will provide an important legal basis for efforts for the reconstruction of Ukraine. We are ready to cooperate with third countries as well.

International court of justice rules that Russia violated UN treaty

Putin says Russia is holding ground in Avdiivka

They captured 19 houses and are holding them.

Ukraine carried out another drone attack on an oil facility deep inside Russian territory

Closing Summary

• Russia and Ukraine have conducted a major prisoner of war exchange just one week after a previous swap was shelved when a Russian Il-76 transport plane was shot down. Russia and Ukraine both said that around 200 prisoners were exchanged on Wednesday, although the two sides disagreed about the exact figures.
  
  
• The EU expects to reach 52% of its target to send 1m rounds of shells to Ukraine by March this year, while the bloc plans to train another 20,000 soldiers, said the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell.
  
  
• Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Russian troops were holding ground on the outskirts of the east Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, an embattled industrial hub.
  
  
• Ukraine claimed to have carried out another drone attack on an oil facility deep inside Russian territory, according to a military intelligence source.
  
  
• Vladimir Putin called for an international investigation into the downing last week of an Il-76 military transport plane in the Belgorod region on Russia’s border with Ukraine. The Russian president said that the plane had been struck with missiles fired from a US-supplied Patriot air defence system, which Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied.
  
  
• Olaf Scholz and four other European leaders admitted that the EU has “fallen short” of its goals to supply Ukraine with artillery ammunition on the eve of an emergency EU summit of EU leaders designed to break the deadlock between member states and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán over a €50bn aid package.
  
  
• The EU must show “clear commitment” to Ukraine, which needs more ammunition, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said before a meeting with EU defence ministers in Brussels.
  
  
• The Kremlin said that it was monitoring the situation around Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, after western and Ukrainian media outlets said President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was trying to oust Zaluzhny.
  
  
• Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, told military manufacturers to “stop fooling around” and further increase the production of self-propelled artillery systems during a visit to arms-producing factories in the Urals.
  
  
• Ukraine’s air defences shot down 14 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that injured one person and damaged commercial buildings, the military has said.
  I’m closing the blog for the rest of the day, but we will be back tomorrow to bring you the latest updates. Thanks for following.