Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 720

Summary for Tuesday, 13th February 2024 - DAY 720

• Russian forces are buying Starlink satellite internet terminals in “Arab countries” for use on the battlefield, Ukraine’s military spy agency has said. The Elon Musk-owned service has been vital to Kyiv’s battlefield communications, but Ukrainian officials have said Russian forces are also increasingly relying on it during their nearly two-year-old invasion, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Russia has hit Kyiv with what was probably a hypersonic Zircon missile, its first use in the nearly two-year-old war, a Ukrainian research institute has said. The Zircon has a range of 1,000km (625 miles) and travels at nine times the speed of sound, according to Russia. The Kyiv Scientific Research Institute for Forensic Examinations said pieces of debris that matched Zircon components were found after a strike on 7 February.
  
  
• Russia said it completed testing of the Zircon missile in June 2022, and Vladimir Putin described it as part of a new generation of unrivalled arms systems. Russia has also attacked Ukraine with the Kinzhal hypersonic missile – which turned out to be a ground-launched ballistic missile dropped from a plane. It was supposed to be unstoppable, but Ukrainian troops have regularly shot them down with Patriot missiles.
  
  
• Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched a missile and drone attack on Monday on the central city of Dnipro and the mayor said infrastructure had been hit. Suspilne public television quoted the water authority as saying power cuts had closed a pumping station and supplies were cut to certain districts.
  
  
• A major Moscow-based online network has been spreading pro-Russian Ukraine war propaganda and disinformation in western Europe, French military and cybersecurity experts say. France’s Vignium agency, which works against foreign entities trying to sway public opinion, says the network, dubbed Portal Kombat, has operated at least 193 sites disseminating pro-Russian propaganda defending the invasion of Ukraine and criticising the government in Kyiv.
  
  
• Hundreds of mourners on Monday attended the funeral of a family of five, including three small children, burned to death in a Russian drone attack in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Russian drones struck a fuel depot on Friday evening, triggering fires that engulfed an entire street, including the house in which the Putyatina family lived. An elderly couple died in the same street. More than 50 people were injured and 15 homes burned down.
  
  
• Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, is planning a tour of western European capitals to lobby for aid for Ukraine around this week’s Munich security conference, Bloomberg News has reported.
  
  
• The EU has adopted a law to set aside windfall profits made on about €300bn in frozen Russian central bank assets, in a first concrete step towards using the money to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. The EU and G7 have been debating for over a year if and how the funds can be used.
  
  
• After Vladimir Putin gave US interviewer Tucker Carlson his exhaustive version of Russia’s historical glory, a Mongolian leader has trolled Vladimir Putin over the size of defunct Eurasian empires. “After Putin’s talk. I found Mongolian historic map. Don’t worry. We are a peaceful and free nation,” wrote Tsakhia Elbegdorj, former Mongolian president, on Twitter/X. Elbegdorj, who was previously also Mongolian prime minister, is an international figure and was a leader in Monglia’s 1990 democratic revolution ending communist rule.
  
  
• Russia on Monday imposed sanctions on 18 British citizens for what Moscow said was demonising Russia and escalating the war in Ukraine. Russia imposed what it called personal sanctions against deputy defence minister James Cartlidge, and a number of other officials and academics including historians Orlando Figes and Norman Davies and Russia specialist James Sherr.
  

Russian air attack damages Dnipro power plant, Ukraine says

Ukrainian forces wipe out majority of Russian assault groups on Dnipro's left bank

Russia preparing for military confrontation with West, says Estonia

Russia puts Estonian PM on wanted list

Ukraine turns scrap river barges into new cargo fleet, welding together decrepit ferries

Summary of main events so far today

• Russia is preparing for a military confrontation with the West within the next decade and could be deterred by a counter build-up of armed forces, Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said. A growing number of Western officials have warned of a military threat from Russia to countries along the eastern flank of Nato, calling for Europe to get prepared by rearming, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Moscow has put the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and other Baltic states officials on a wanted list, as Tallinn warns of an imminent Russian military buildup along its border. The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said the Estonian state secretary, Taimar Peterkop; the Lithuanian culture minister, Simonas Kairys, and Kallas were accused of “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers”, a reference to the removal of Soviet-era second world war memorials.
  
  
• The Democratic-led US Senate has voted to pass a $95.34bn aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The bill appears to face long odds of getting to the floor in the House, where the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, criticised it for lacking conservative provisions to stem a record flow of migrants across the US-Mexico border.
  
  
• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed the US Senate vote to support a bill envisaging $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. “American assistance brings just peace in Ukraine closer and restores global stability, resulting in increased security and prosperity for all Americans and all the free world,” he said on X.
  
  
• Russia attacked the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro with missiles and drones on Tuesday, damaging a power plant and cutting off water supplies to some residents, Ukrainian officials and media said. The city of just under one million people came under attack from a missile and four groups of drones approaching from the south, east and north, Ukraine Air Force said on the Telegram messaging app, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Russian forces are buying Starlink satellite internet terminals in “Arab countries” for use on the battlefield, Ukraine’s military spy agency has said. The Elon Musk-owned service has been vital to Kyiv’s battlefield communications, but Ukrainian officials have said Russian forces are also increasingly relying on it during their nearly two-year-old invasion, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Russia has lost more than 3,000 tanks during its invasion of Ukraine - the equivalent of its entire pre-war active inventory - but has enough lower-quality armoured vehicles in storage for years of replacements, a leading research centre said. Ukraine has also suffered heavy loses since the invasion began in February 2022 but Western military replenishments have allowed it to maintain inventories while upgrading quality, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual Military Balance report, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed European warnings about “Russian propaganda”, saying that anything which countered the mainstream narrative was now labelled as propaganda by the West. Peskov was asked about a Monday meeting between the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland at which they warned of a spike in Russian propaganda in European countries ahead of June’s elections to the European Parliament.
  
  
• Russia’s response to the West’s seizure of its assets will be “tough,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday, state news agency TASS reported. “The attitude to the West will be like to thieves,” Zakharova said.
  
  
• Russia has hit Kyiv with what was probably a hypersonic Zircon missile, its first use in the nearly two-year-old war, a Ukrainian research institute has said. The Zircon has a range of 1,000km (625 miles) and travels at nine times the speed of sound, according to Russia. The Kyiv Scientific Research Institute for Forensic Examinations said pieces of debris that matched Zircon components were found after a strike on 7 February.
  
  
• Russia said it completed testing of the Zircon missile in June 2022, and Vladimir Putin described it as part of a new generation of unrivalled arms systems. Russia has also attacked Ukraine with the Kinzhal hypersonic missile – which turned out to be a ground-launched ballistic missile dropped from a plane. It was supposed to be unstoppable, but Ukrainian troops have regularly shot them down with Patriot missiles.
  
  
• Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched a missile and drone attack on Monday on the central city of Dnipro and the mayor said infrastructure had been hit. Suspilne public television quoted the water authority as saying power cuts had closed a pumping station and supplies were cut to certain districts.
  
  
• A major Moscow-based online network has been spreading pro-Russian Ukraine war propaganda and disinformation in western Europe, French military and cybersecurity experts say. France’s Vignium agency, which works against foreign entities trying to sway public opinion, says the network, dubbed Portal Kombat, has operated at least 193 sites disseminating pro-Russian propaganda defending the invasion of Ukraine and criticising the government in Kyiv.
  

Moscow MiG fighter factory ablaze, social media report

A Moscow factory that manufactures MiG fighters is on fire, the telegram channel Baza reported on Feb. 13.

Air defense shoots down enemy X-59 aircraft on approach to Odesa, debris damages civilian infrastructure

Painting by Aivazovsky stolen from Ukraine appears on auction in Russia

Ivan Aivazovsky's painting Lunar Night is being auctioned in Russia. At the start of the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, it was illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum alongside over fifty other paintings.

The Russians' plans to auction Aivazovsky's painting were announced by Gunduz Mammadov, ex-deputy of the Prosecutor General and former prosecutor of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, on Twitter (X).
He recalled that in 2017, Interpol added 52 paintings transferred to the occupied Crimea to the international wanted list at the request of the Crimean Prosecutor's Office.

"In this way, the Russian Federation openly disregards international law, because according to the UNESCO Convention of 1970, the export of cultural property and the transfer of property rights are prohibited," Mammadov emphasised.
The Russian media reported that Lunar Night will be the main lot in the auction, which is to  take place  at the Moscow Auction House on 18 February. They note that the painting is estimated to be worth RUB 100 million (about US$1.09 million) prior to sale.

Screenshot: Moscow Auction House website

In addition to Aivazovsky's work, 123 works by artists from the 18th to 20th centuries will be offered for sale. They include six works by Ilya Repin, as well as works by Isaac Levitan, Vasily Vereshchagin, Nikolai Roerich, and others.
According to Russian media, the auction will be held in the same manner as Christie's and Sotheby's (which have refused putting Russian lots for auction), and the website will allow visitors to "fill out a form for the export of art objects from Russia."

How Russia stole Lunar Night

On 18 February 2014, the Simferopol Art Museum and the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore signed an agreement to display paintings as part of the "Russian and Ukrainian Art of the 18th – Early 20th Centuries" exhibition. On the same day, 52 paintings from the Ukrainian Museum Fund arrived in Mariupol from Crimea. Among them were Lunar Night by Ivan Aivazovsky; Road in the Forest by Ivan Shishkin; Landscape.Evening by Alexei Savrasov; Swamp by Isaac Levitan, and others.

Lunar Night by Ivan Aivazovsky

The exhibition in Mariupol was scheduled to run until 31 May 2014, but it was closed earlier because the Simferopol Museum's management demanded that the paintings be returned to the already-occupied Crimea. On 19 March 2014, Mariupol Museum workers received a letter from the director of the Simferopol Art Museum.
In response, the-then director of the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore, Olha Chaplynska, unilaterally terminated the agreement for the exhibition of Crimean paintings. On 20 March, Natalia Kuronysheva, head of the funds department at the Kuindzhi Art Museum, handed over 52 exhibited paintings to the envoy.

In August 2017, Radio Liberty reported, citing Russian media, that a group of retired military men from Crimea stole and delivered paintings from the Mariupol Museum to the occupied peninsula.
On 17 August 2017, the Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office in Crimea announced that 50 paintings had been added to the wanted list via Interpol channels after being illegally transferred to the Simferopol Art Museum in March 2014.

Interpol recognised the paintings as "stolen"

Chaplynska and Kuronysheva were notified of suspicion in September 2017. They faced seven and twelve-year prison sentences. However, in February 2018, the court sentenced both women to three years in prison, with one year of deprivation of the right to hold positions related to the performance of organisational, administrative, and economic duties. Furthermore, by enacting the amnesty law, the court absolved them of their prescribed punishment.

Protesting Bulgarian farmers pour milk in Sofia's streets as Ukrainian imports flood market

Russian forces reportedly advance in Ukraine's Avdiivka

Ukraine has sent reinforcements to Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, as Russian forces continue to focus on cutting the main Ukrainian supply lines.

Ukraine sends reinforcements to Avdiivka as Russian assaults continue

Closing Summary

• The US permanent representative to NATO has branded Donald Trump’s suggestion that the US would not protect its allies from Russian invasion as “dangerous and irresponsible”. In scripted, but unusually frank remarks, Julianne Smith told reporters his recent remarks put military personnel in danger.
  
  
• Russia is preparing for a military confrontation with the West within the next decade and could be deterred by a counter build-up of armed forces, Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said. A growing number of Western officials have warned of a military threat from Russia to countries along the eastern flank of Nato, calling for Europe to get prepared by rearming, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Moscow has put the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, and other Baltic states officials on a wanted list, as Tallinn warns of an imminent Russian military buildup along its border. The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said the Estonian state secretary, Taimar Peterkop; the Lithuanian culture minister, Simonas Kairys, and Kallas were accused of “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers”, a reference to the removal of Soviet-era second world war memorials.
  
  
• Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kallas said on Tuesday she would not be silenced and continue her strong support to Ukraine after Russian police put her on a wanted list. She said: “I will continue my strong support to Ukraine. I will continue to stand for increasing Europe’s defence.”
  
  
• The Democratic-led US Senate has voted to pass a $95.34bn aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The bill appears to face long odds of getting to the floor in the House, where the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, criticised it for lacking conservative provisions to stem a record flow of migrants across the US-Mexico border.
  
  
• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy welcomed the US Senate vote to support a bill envisaging $61 billion in aid for Ukraine. “American assistance brings just peace in Ukraine closer and restores global stability, resulting in increased security and prosperity for all Americans and all the free world,” he said on X.
  
  
• US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday said he was confident a $95 billion bill providing assistance to Ukraine, Israel and other allies would pass the House of Representatives with support from both Republicans and Democrats if there were a vote. Speaking hours after the Senate backed the bill in a pre-dawn vote, he called on House leaders to do the right thing and allow a vote.
  
  
• Russia attacked the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro with missiles and drones on Tuesday, damaging a power plant and cutting off water supplies to some residents, Ukrainian officials and media said. The city of just under one million people came under attack from a missile and four groups of drones approaching from the south, east and north, Ukraine Air Force said on the Telegram messaging app, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Russian forces are buying Starlink satellite internet terminals in “Arab countries” for use on the battlefield, Ukraine’s military spy agency has said. The Elon Musk-owned service has been vital to Kyiv’s battlefield communications, but Ukrainian officials have said Russian forces are also increasingly relying on it during their nearly two-year-old invasion, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Russia has lost more than 3,000 tanks during its invasion of Ukraine - the equivalent of its entire pre-war active inventory - but has enough lower-quality armoured vehicles in storage for years of replacements, a leading research centre said. Ukraine has also suffered heavy loses since the invasion began in February 2022 but Western military replenishments have allowed it to maintain inventories while upgrading quality, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual Military Balance report, Reuters reported.
  
  
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed European warnings about “Russian propaganda”, saying that anything which countered the mainstream narrative was now labelled as propaganda by the West. Peskov was asked about a Monday meeting between the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland at which they warned of a spike in Russian propaganda in European countries ahead of June’s elections to the European Parliament.
  
  
• Russia’s response to the West’s seizure of its assets will be “tough,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday, state news agency TASS reported. “The attitude to the West will be like to thieves,” Zakharova said.