Live Update: Russia’s “Special Operation” in Ukraine; Day 359

Ukraine was weathering a wave of Russian attacks on its power grid and seeing recovering supplies despite Russia’s campaign against key infrastructure, energy operator Ukrenergo has announced.

After humiliating defeats on the ground, Russia has since October pummelled Ukraine’s energy facilities, leading to power shortages that have left millions in the cold and dark during winter.

“There has been no shortage of electricity in the energy system during the entire working week, and none is expected so far,” Ukrenergo said on the Telegram messenger.

French President Emmanuel Macron has urged Ukraine’s allies to intensify their military support for Kyiv.

“We absolutely need to intensify our support and our effort to the resistance of the Ukrainian people and its army and help them to launch a counter-offensive,” Macron told the Munich Security Conference.

He added such a counter-offensive would allow for “credible negotiations, determined by Ukraine, its authorities and its people” to take place on ending the war.

It is “obvious” Ukraine will not be the last stop in Putin’s invasion, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“He’s going to continue his movement all the way, … including all the other states that at some point in time were part of the Soviet bloc,” Ukraine’s president told the Munich Security Conference via video link.

Zelensky also added he did not think Russia could win the war.

He likened Ukraine to David and Russia to Goliath in the biblical tale in which the underdog David, armed only with a sling, defeats a giant in combat.

The president stated David won against Goliath by action rather than conversation and Goliath “has no chances”.

Zelensky said there was “no alternative” to victory, as Kyiv presses its fightback against Russia’s forces.

“There is no alternative to Ukrainian victory … No alternative to Ukraine in the EU. No alternative to Ukraine in NATO,” he told the Munich Security Conference.

He also called for Ukraine’s Western allies to “hurry” and speed up their deliveries of weapons amid fears a new Russian offensive is getting under way.

“We need to hurry up. We need speed – speed of our agreements, speed of our delivery … speed of decisions to limit Russian potential. There is no alternative to speed because it is the speed that the life depends on,” the president added.

Russia has appointed new commanders for three of the country’s military districts, the state-owned RIA Novosti news outlet has reported.

Lieutenant-General Andrey Mordvichev was chosen as the new commander of the country’s Central Military District, replacing promoted Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin.

Lapin was appointed chief of staff of the country’s ground forces last month.

RIA also reported that Yevgeny Nikiforov had become chief of the Western Military District and Sergey Kuzovlev was appointed as commander of the Southern Military District.

President Vladimir Putin has lauded Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom, saying the company will thrive despite attempts by the West to cut its clout.

“Despite unfair – to put it bluntly – competition, direct attempts from the outside to hinder and restrain its development, Gazprom is moving forward, launching new projects,” Putin told CEO Alexei Miller.

“Over the previous 30 years, global gas consumption has almost doubled, and in the next 20 years, according to expert estimates, it will add at least another 20 percent, and maybe more,” he added.

“In the so-called transition period, the demand will be enormous. Moreover, more than half of this increase will fall on the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, first of all, of course, on the People’s Republic of China, bearing in mind the growth rates of its economy,” he continued.

President Volodymyr Zelensky says there should be no “taboo” on the supply of military aid to Ukraine.

Speaking at a joint news conference with visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Zelensky stated Kyiv had a “common understanding” with the Netherlands on the issue.

“There should not be any taboo on the supply and support of weapons to our army, to our Ukraine, because it supports and protects our sovereignty,” he added.

Ukraine has repeatedly appealed to its allies in the West for fighter jets in recent weeks, but no country has yet publicly committed to providing them.

The World Health Organization has appealed for more funds to support Ukraine’s health sector, which has been hard-hit by Russia’s invasion.

Hans Kluge, the UN health agency’s regional director for Europe, said additional support was needed to ensure that mental health and rehabilitation services could be provided.

“We aim to reach 13.6 million people with this support this year,” Kluge, the UN health agency’s regional director for Europe, told an online briefing from the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr.

“That’s why we have increased our appeal for 2023 to $240m – $160m for Ukraine and $80m for refugee-receiving countries,” he added.

Russia has accused the United States of “inciting” Ukraine to escalate the war by condoning attacks on Russian military targets in annexed Crimea.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s comments came after US undersecretary of state, Victoria Nuland, said Washington supported Ukrainian strikes on military installations on the Black Sea peninsula, which Moscow seized in 2014.

“Now the American warmongers have gone even further: They incite the Kyiv regime to further escalate the war,” Zakharova told reporters when asked about Nuland’s remarks.

“They supply weapons in huge quantities, provide intelligence and participate directly in the planning of combat operations,” she continued, adding that some US officials dreamed like “crazies” of defeating Russia.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s president, has reiterated Kyiv’s position that it will not hold peace talks with Moscow unless Russia withdraws its forces from Ukraine.

“Negotiations can begin when Russia withdraws its troops from the territory of Ukraine. Other options only give Russia time to regroup forces and resume hostilities at any moment,” Podolyak said in a post on Twitter.

Negotiations on extending the UN-backed Black Sea grain deal will begin next week, a senior Ukrainian official has said.

“I think common sense will prevail and the corridor will be extended,” deputy infrastructure minister Yuriy Vaskov stated during a grain conference in Kyiv organised by the ProAgro agriculture consultancy.

The agreement, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, and signed in July last year, was extended by another 120 days in November and is up for renewal again next month.

Russia has signalled that it is unhappy with some aspects of the deal – which allowed grain to be exported from three Ukrainian ports – and with sanctions imposed on it since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago.

The United States believes Crimea should be demilitarised and supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets on the Moscow-annexed Black Sea peninsula, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland has stated.

“No matter what the Ukrainians decide about Crimea in terms of where they choose to fight etcetera, Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum, at a minimum, demilitarised,” Nuland told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

She also said Russia had a host of military installations crucial to the conflict located on the peninsula, which was seized by Moscow in early 2014.

“Those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them and we are supporting that,” Nuland added.

Ukraine has repeatedly said it wants to reclaim all territory annexed by Russia. Moscow has warned any attacks on Crimea would risk a major escalation of the war.

A top Estonian defence leader has warned that if Vladimir Putin is not stopped now, he could entangle the region in a larger conflict, perhaps one with even greater security implications for the US.

That’s because Russia has shown it will keep trying to retake territories that were once part of the Soviet Union and, so far, economic sanctions and its significant military losses in Ukraine have not changed Putin’s larger goals, said Kristjan Mäe, the head of the Estonian Ministry of Defense’s NATO and EU department, as US defence secretary Lloyd Austin visited the Baltic nation.

Estonia, which borders Russia, was forcefully incorporated into the Soviet Union during World War II and gained its independence only with the Soviet collapse in 1991. It joined NATO and the European Union in 2004.

“If we do not solve this war at this moment, where it is, first of all, there’s going to be a bigger war,” Mäe added.

The United States and its allies plan a major array of new sanctions against Russia for the February 24 anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine, a senior US official has said.

“You will see around the 24th a big new package of sanctions from both the US and all of our G7 partners,” Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, told reporters.

“These sanctions will deepen and broaden in certain categories where we have been active before, particularly in limiting the flow of technology to the Russian defence industry,” she continued.

Nuland added the package will also target individuals, expand banking restrictions and crack down on evasion of existing sanctions, including in third countries.

Russia has switched its aerial attack tactics to fool Ukraine’s air defences, using decoy missiles without explosive warheads and deploying balloons, a senior Ukrainian official has stated.

“The Russians are definitely changing tactics” as the war approaches its anniversary, Mykhailo Podolyak, Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The goal of the decoy missiles, Podolyak added, is to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems by offering too many targets.

“They want to overload our anti-aircraft system to get an extra chance to hit infrastructure facilities,” Podolyak said, adding that Ukraine’s air defences are adapting to the challenge.

The European Commission has abandoned plans to sanction Russia’s nuclear sector or its representatives in its next sanctions package, Politico has reported, citing three diplomats.

The head of the EU executive, the European Commission, had originally told EU countries that it would try to draw up sanctions targeting Russia’s civil nuclear sector, but that plan has now failed, according to the report.

The United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine will not change if the main opposition Labour Party wins power in an election next year, Labour leader Keir Starmer has said during a visit to Ukraine.

The UK has been a leading supporter of Ukraine under the governing Conservatives, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has followed predecessor Boris Johnson’s example by visiting Kyiv. Johnson is popular in Ukraine, and has a street named after him.

But an election is widely expected next year in the UK, and opinion polls give Labour a strong lead over the Conservatives.

“Should there be an election next year and a change of government, the position on Ukraine will remain the same,” Starmer stated while visiting the town of Irpin outside Kyiv.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin has said Washington is ready to defend the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania if required, and will keep a “persistent” military presence in the region.

“We are committed to Article 5, you can bet on that,” Austin stated, citing the requirement in the NATO charter that each member of the alliance defend each other if they come under attack.

Speaking in Tallinn after talks with Estonian leaders, he also noted the US will continue to keep a “persistent, rotational” military presence in the region.

“The United States remains steadfastly committed to the freedom and sovereignty of our Baltic allies,” he told reporters.

Russia’s defence ministry says Ukraine has returned 101 prisoners of war (POWs) from territory controlled by Kyiv in the latest such swap between the two sides.

“Aircraft of the military transport aviation of the Russian Aerospace Forces will deliver the released servicemen to Moscow for treatment and rehabilitation in medical institutions of the Russian Defence Ministry,” the ministry said.

Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff stated 100 troops and one civilian had been returned to Ukraine.

Nearly all had been defending the besieged southern city of Mariupol before it fell to Russian forces, Andriy Yermak added.