Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 714

Summary for Wednesday, 7th February 2024 - DAY 714

• Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities this morning. Ukraine’s air force said the attack killed one person in the south and triggering air defence systems in the capital, where several blasts were heard. Two loud explosions were heard in the centre of the city at around 7am, with at least two more 45 minutes later on, the Kyiv Post reported. One of its reporters heard air defences engaging multiple projectiles and saw one in-air explosion.
  
  
• A missile attack in Mykolaiv left one person dead and reportedly damaged at least 20 residential buildings, said the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych. Oleh Sinehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s north-east, said Russian missiles struck non-residential infrastructure in Kharkiv city, the administrative centre of the region.
  
  
• Polish and Nato warplanes had scrambled because “intensive long-range aviation activity of the Russian Federation is being observed, related to missile strikes on the territory of Ukraine”, Poland’s military said.
  
  
• Ukrainian special forces have said they blew up a drilling platform in the Black Sea that Russia was using to increase the range of its drones. The operation, dubbed Citadel, was conducted at night and also captured “important enemy equipment”.
  
  
• Joe Biden told Republicans in Congress to “show some spine”, stand up to Donald Trump and stop playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands as he acknowledged that an exhaustively negotiated, bipartisan bill that includes security funding for Ukraine is stalled. “All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor,” said the US president. “Why? The simple reason: Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically.”
  
  
• A two-month-old baby was killed and three people were injured on Tuesday in a Russian strike on Zolochiv, north-eastern Ukraine, officials said. “Around 2.30am a three-storey hotel was destroyed in Zolochiv … following two S-300 missile strikes,” said Oleg Sinegubov, the Kharkiv regional governor. Thirty buildings were damaged including cafes, a market, pharmacies and a hotel, police said.
  
  
• Some parts of the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka are in a “critical” condition as they fight off Russian shelling and incursions, according to Vitaliy Barabash, head of the town’s military administration. “This does not mean that everything is lost, that everything is very bad. But the enemy is directing very large amount of forces at our city,” he told Ukrainian TV.
  
  
• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has decreed the creation of a separate branch of Ukraine’s armed forces devoted to drones. Zelenskiy has pointed to drone production domestically and with partner nations as strategically vital, and pledged Ukraine will produce a million in 2024. The commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in a comment for CNN last week that drones “along with other types of advanced weapons” help Ukraine avoid being drawn into costly positional warfare.
  

Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities kill five and injure 50

Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Wednesday morning, Ukraine’s air force said, killing one person in the south and triggering air defence systems in the capital, where several blasts were heard.

Two loud explosions were heard in the centre of the city at around 7am, with at least two more 45 minutes later on, the Kyiv Post reported. One of its reporters heard air defences engaging multiple projectiles and saw one in-air explosion.
Ukraine’s air force said it had intercepted 15 out of 20 drones and 29 out of 44 missilesmultiple projectiles and saw one in-air explosion.

Powerful explosion occurs at plant in Russia that produces ballistic missiles

A powerful explosion has occurred in the Udmurt Republic in Russia at a military plant.

Source: TASS; Baza; Radio Liberty

Details: Reportedly, the explosion occurred near the city of Izhevsk at the JSC Votkinsk Machine Building Plant that manufactures military and civilian products.

A large fire started at the plant after the detonation.

Kremlin-aligned media outlet TASS reported that it has allegedly learned from the dispatch service that the explosion occurred "during scheduled rocket engine tests".

For reference: The JSC Votkinsk Machine Building Plant is located 50 kilometres from Izhevsk, the capital of Russia’s Udmurt Republic. Apart from civilian products, it produces artillery missiles, including strategic ballistic missiles for the Topol-M and Iskander missile systems. At the end of 2023, the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant was granted 19 state contracts for the production of nuclear weapons components. The plant has a training ground.

Buildings across Kyiv hit in Russian missile attack

Moscow police detain around 20 journalists during protest by soldiers’ wives

Police officers detain a person during a protest led by a movement of Russian women demanding the return from Ukraine of their men, who were mobilized following a September 2022 decree by President Vladimir Putin. Around 20 journalists were arrested and briefly detained in Moscow on February 3 while covering the protest. (Reuters/Stringer)

New York, February 7, 2024—Russian authorities must refrain from detaining journalists in the course of their work and allow the media to report freely on protests criticizing the war in Ukraine, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

Around 20 journalists were arrested and briefly detained in the Russian capital of Moscow on February 3 while covering a protest led by a movement of Russian women demanding the return from Ukraine of their men, who were mobilized following a September 2022 decree by President Vladimir Putin, according to multiple media reports and human-rights news website OVD-Info.

The journalists were local and foreign reporters working with multiple international and local media outlets, including global wire service Reuters, French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), German weekly Der Spiegel, Dutch public television NOS, Japanese broadcaster Fuji Television, local independent online outlets Sota.Vision and RusNews, the news Telegram channels Ostorozhno Novosti and Mozhem Obyasnit, and the Russian newspaper Kommersant.
Those detained included Sota.Vision reporter Mikhail Lebedev, Kommersant photojournalist Evgeny Razumnyy, Fuji Television journalist Andrei Zaikov, and RusNews reporter Aleksandr Filippov. Most of the other journalists chose not to disclose their names “to avoid problems,” Aleksei Obukhov, exiled editor with independent news outlet SOTA, which covered the protest, told CPJ.
“An AFP journalist was indeed among a group of journalists arrested last Saturday, even though he was duly accredited to cover the protest. We prefer not to give his name,” an AFP representative told CPJ via email.
“Russia’s latest mass detention of journalists in Moscow is an attempt by the authorities to conceal from the population any dissenting voices on the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Journalists are doing their jobs covering the protests and should not be targeted for exposing people’s discontent.”

Around 1 p.m., 20 police officers arrested 13 journalists, who were all male, in Manezhnaya Square, near Red Square, and brought them to the Kitay-Gorod police station in the center of Moscow, one of the detained journalists told CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. According to OVD-Info, 27 people were detained at the Square, “most of them journalists.”
“They were interested in men, especially in yellow vests [which are required by law for journalists reporting from protests],” the journalist told CPJ. “It was fast. The policeman didn’t say a word, he just took me by the shoulder and led me towards the avtozak [police transit vehicle]. At the entrance, we were forced to hand over our documents, mobile phones, and cameras.”

Police refused to give the journalist access to the lawyer sent by his outlet, he told CPJ, adding that he was released a few hours later after authorities photographed his press card and editorial assignment document, questioned his professional activities, and required him to sign a document warning him about “participating in public events.” This document, which states that the police “have information” that he could “violate the law in the future,” can be used as a basis to prosecute him if he is again detained while covering a protest, he told CPJ.

Later, as protestors headed towards President Vladimir Putin’s political headquarters for the upcoming March 2024 presidential election, police arrested seven additional male journalists and took them to the Basmanyy police station in the east of Moscow.
“It was clear they [the police] went after specific people, all men and mostly journalists,” an unnamed witness told POLITICO. “Probably to discourage journalists from covering such events in the future.”

During their detention, the police seized all the journalists’ telephones, OVD-Info reported. CPJ was unable to confirm if all the phones were returned, but the journalist who spoke to CPJ said he believed all had been returned.
After being detained for two to three hours, each of the journalists were released without charge. 
“All detained journalists were wearing PRESS jackets and had documents proving their special status, so they should not be detained,” OVD-Info spokesperson Dmitrii Anisimov told CPJ. “We think that this strategy was applied because detaining relatives of Russian soldiers would be rather politically weird for Russian authorities. So they decided to decrease media coverage of these rallies by physically removing journalists from there.”  

CPJ did not receive a response to its email to the Moscow police asking for comment on the arrests.

Wagner group building new HQ, says leader

Closing summary

• The Wagner group is building a new headquarters after merging with Russia’s national guard, new leader Anton Yelizarov has claimed. “We are building a camp, so that the new units (a volunteer unit) that will be formed — which will become part of the volunteer corps of the Russia’s National Guard (Rosgvardiya) — can arrive and settle,” he said.
  
  
• Russia’s air defence systems destroyed seven Ukraine-launched rockets and two drones over the southwestern region of Belgorod, the Russian defence ministry said on Wednesday. The Ukrainian strike was carried out with Czech-made Vampire rockets, the ministry said - the same type which, according to Moscow, was used in deadly strikes on the city of Belgorod in late December.
  
  
• UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi visited the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine on Wednesday and said there were enough wells on site to supply cooling pools, Russian news agencies reported. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also rotated its team of observers who are permanently stationed at Zaporizhzhia, the agencies reported.
  
  
• Christoph Heusgen, who is chairing this year’s Munich Security Conference, said Russian government officials have not been invited, as they did not seem open to meaningful dialogue. Nicknamed the “Davos for defence”, the event will take place 16-18 February, days before the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
  
  
• Russia launched a missile attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities on Wednesday morning, Ukraine’s air force said, killing one person in the south and triggering air defence systems in the capital, where several blasts were heard. Two loud explosions were heard in the centre of the city at around 7am, with at least two more 45 minutes later on, the Kyiv Post reported. One of its reporters heard air defences engaging multiple projectiles and saw one in-air explosion.
  
  
• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said two people had been killed in the capital Kyiv on Wednesday in a Russian missile attack. “In Kyiv, more than 10 people were injured. As of now, we know of about two dead. There may be more people under the rubble,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app.
  
  
• Ukraine’s air defence shot down 29 missiles and 15 drones launched by Russia in a massive attack on Wednesday, the Ukrainian army chief said. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said Russian forces launched 64 missiles and drones in several waves of the attack, Reuters reported. A total of 44 missiles and drones were downed, he added on the Telegram messaging app.
  
  
• Parts of the capital Kyiv were without electricity on Wednesday after a downed Russian missile damaged power lines, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Kyiv and the rest of the country were under a massive Russian attack, with the air alerts lasting for over two hours already.
  
  
• President Vladimir Putin granted an interview to US television host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday, the Kremlin said, his first to an American journalist since before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had agreed to the Carlson interview because the approach of the former Fox News host differed from the “one-sided” reporting of the Ukraine conflict by many Western news outlets, Reuters reported.
  
  
• The Ukrainian parliament passed at first reading a bill tightening army mobilisation rules aimed at allowing Kyiv to draft more people as war with Russia nears its third year, several lawmakers said. “This is not the final decision. There will be a second reading, and changes will be made before it,” Oleksiy Honcharenko, one of the lawmakers, said on the Telegram messaging app.
  
  
• Swedish prosecutors have said they will drop further investigation into explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines. “The conclusion of the investigation is that Swedish jurisdiction does not apply and that the investigation therefore should be closed,” the Swedish Prosecution Authority said on Wednesday. The multibillion-dollar Nord Stream pipelines transporting Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of blasts in Swedish and Danish waters in September 2022, releasing vast amounts of methane into the air.
  
  
• UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi arrived at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Russian-controlled Ukraine on Wednesday, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported. Grossi arrived at the plant accompanied by IAEA mission staff and Russian soldiers, RIA reported.
  
  
• Russia’s upper house of parliament has asked the finance ministry to draw up a law that would impose retaliatory measures on the West if it moves against frozen Russian assets, the TASS state news agency reported. The Financial Times reported on 3 February that the G7 had drawn up plans to use frozen Russian assets as collateral to raise money to help Ukraine.
  
  
• The Kremlin said on Wednesday that the goals of what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine remain unchanged. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the subject after being asked about the upcoming two-year anniversary of the date when Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.