Summary of the day
Thank you for following the Russia-Ukraine war live blog today. It will be closed shortly but you can continue to follow the latest news here. Below is a closing summary of today’s key posts.
A ceasefire in the Russian-Ukrainian war would not lead to political dialogue, and would only benefit Russia, Zelenskiy said on Thursday during a visit to Estonia. Zelenskiy was meeting with the country’s leaders as a part of a wider tour of the Baltic region.
Estonian president Alar Karis called for long-term defence investment as Ukrainian leaders visited Tallinn on Thursday. “Lasting peace requires long-term investment in our defence capabilities,” he said.
Switzerland and Ukraine will host peace formula talks at Davos on Sunday. It is the latest in a series of meetings to rally support for Ukraine’s peace plan and will be the fourth of its kind and the biggest yet.
Ukraine’s parliament have refused to debate a controversial bill aimed at drafting more soldiers. Speaking after a closed door meeting with Ukraine’s military leaders, David Arakhamia, ruling party leader said “some provisions directly violate human rights”.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said he could meet his Ukrainian counterpart on 29 January.
13 people were injured, including foreign journalists after two Russian missiles struck a Kharkiv hotel late on Wednesday, local authorities said.
Sergiy Tomilenko, president of Ukraine’s national union of journalists, said today that Russian missile strikes which struck a hotel in Kharkiv amounted to “the intimidation of media workers in order to limit the coverage of the war”.
Top defence officials from Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding in Istanbul establishing the Mine Countermeasures Naval Group in the Black Sea (MCM Black Sea), which will oversee de-mining operations in the Black Sea to ensure safe waters after Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Pro-war Russian leftwing activist, Sergei Udaltsov was questioned over terrorism offence, says his lawyer.
Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine is going through “hard times” due to recent fatal shelling by Kyiv, its governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said at an expo in Moscow on Thursday.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s security council and a senior ally of Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the US and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow.
The World Bank’s private investment arm has mobilised nearly $1bn to rebuild Ukraine’s private sector and is shifting its broader investment focus towards equity.
Ukraine is effectively a test site for North Korean nuclear missiles because Kim Jong-un’s regime is supplying Russia with rockets that can deliver an atomic bomb, South Korea has said.
Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who are vying for the Republican presidential nomination in the US, were split over continuing support for Ukraine’s defence in a debate on Wednesday night. DeSantis suggested it was not a top US priority and accused Haley of wanting an “open-ended commitment” of US money and arms. Haley cast supporting Ukraine and stopping Russia’s aggression as a vital US priority. “You do not have to choose” between priorities like the US-Mexico border and Ukraine, she said. “This is about keeping America safe. This is about preventing war.”
The Kremlin has accused the US of trying to pressure European countries into backing the seizure of frozen Russian assets to help finance the rebuilding of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was responding to a Bloomberg report published on Wednesday.
Neo-Nazis in the US no longer see backing Ukraine as a worthy cause. Two years into the war in Ukraine, once a destination for American extremists, many within the underground far-right movement in the US are avidly disavowing it and advising followers to stay away.
Ukraine has been building barricades and digging trenches as the country’s focus shifts towards defence. On Wednesday, Reuters reporters visited trenches being dug with an excavator and shovels at an undisclosed location in the Chernihiv region near the Russian border.
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The EU needs to increase its annual defence budget tenfold if it is to secure its future against future threats from Russia and elsewhere, the European commissioner responsible for the internal market and critical raw materials has said.
Thierry Breton said the EU was already alive to the needs generated by Russia’s war on Ukraine but also had to be mindful of a potential weakening of US support for defence in Europe, which started with Barack Obama and was hardened by the last Trump administration.
“We just have to make sure we are prepared for all eventualities. Russia is one of our biggest concerns,” he said arguing Europe’s ammunition supplies has to be “on a par” with Russia.
“We need to enhance drastically our capacity … this is something I am pushing really hard,” he said. His remarks come two days after he revealed that Trump had told EU leaders in 2020 that the US would “never come help” if Europe was attacked.
Breton told reporters he shared the anecdote with members of the European parliament as one of two “triggers” to get member states thinking seriously about a change in approach to defence on the continent. The first trigger was Ukraine, the second was the prospect of Trump returning to the White House.
“He [Trump] was very vocal in the way he saw Europe, the way he saw Nato continuing, but of course he said it many times publicly, and that was part of the wake-up call for many member states,” Breton told reporters. “We probably need to handle more and more defence and security on our own. Of course we [are part of] Nato but if the biggest partner of the alliance had this view, we needed to take this into consideration,” he added.
“But to be honest, it started before Trump, you remember when Obama was in office and came to Brussels and made a statement … it was not the same warning as Trump but the trend was started here,” he added.
He also told reporters that the EU was “close” to achieving its target of producing 1m ammunition rounds a year for Ukraine and other uses. But he warned that some member states were not doing enough to get their factories to divert supplies going to other countries to home stockpiles.
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Russia's Medvedev warns of nuclear response if Ukraine hits missile launch sites
A senior ally of Putin warned on Thursday that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the US and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Moscow.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s security council and former Russian president, said that some Ukrainian military commanders were considering hitting missile launch sites inside Russia with western-supplied long-range missiles, according to Reuters.
He did not name the commanders or disclose more details of the alleged plan and there was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to his threat. Medvedev’s comments, posted on Telegram, read:
What does this mean? It means only one thing – they risk running into the action of paragraph 19 of the fundamentals of Russia’s state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence. This should be remembered.
Paragraph 19 of Russia’s 2020 nuclear doctrine sets out the conditions under which a Russian president would consider using a nuclear weapon: broadly as a response to an attack using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or to the use of conventional weapons against Russia “when the very existence of the state is put under threat”. Reuters say that Medvedev made specific mention of point “g” of paragraph 19, which deals with the nuclear response to a conventional weapons attack.
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A top EU official has floated the idea of a €100bn ($110bn) fund to boost Europe’s defence industry in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner called it “an ambition” and “a vision”, reports AFP.
The French commissioner gave no details on how the potential fund would be financed and conceded any plan still needed to be debated within the 27-nation bloc. He said the figure was his “personal assessment, what I consider to be necessary” to significantly increase the capacity of Europe’s defence industry. Stepping up Europe’s ability to arm itself was a “vital subject”, he added.
Breton has already launched a series of smaller-scale initiatives aimed at bolstering ammunition production and EU defence firms as the bloc struggles to arm Kyiv and refill its own stocks.
He insisted the EU would by “March, April” reach a target he set of having the capacity to produce 1 million 155-millimetre artillery shells each year.
Ukraine to hold fourth peace formula talks at Davos on Sunday
Switzerland and Ukraine will host about 120 national security advisers in the Swiss resort town of Davos on Sunday, Switzerland’s foreign affairs department said. It is the latest in a series of meetings to rally support for Ukraine’s peace plan, reports Reuters.
The meeting is the fourth of its kind and the biggest yet, after previous gatherings in Copenhagen, Jeddah and most recently in Malta in October. It’s slated to take place in the run-up to the World Economic Forum, which begins on Monday.
Officials had hoped the meeting in Malta would lead to the setting of a date for a global peace summit to build a coalition of support for Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan, drafted by Zelenskiy in December 2022. However, co-chairs limited themselves at the time to a joint statement referring to the participants’ commitment to a just and lasting peace.
Posting about the meeting on X, Switzerland’s foreign affairs department noted that the agenda was for national security advisers to discuss “the principles of the Ukrainian peace formula for a lasting solution”. It will be chaired by Ignazio Cassis, Switzerland’s foreign minister and Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office.
Davos, January 14, 2024: 4th NSA meeting on #Ukraine's peace formula.
— Swiss MFA (@SwissMFA) January 11, 2024
National Security Advisors will discuss the principles of the Ukrainian peace formula for a lasting solution, chaired by @IgnazioCassis & @AndriyYermak.
🇨🇭🤝🇺🇦
More info 👉https://t.co/9AvtopD6Io pic.twitter.com/lfpB5p1tXo
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Neo-Nazis in the US no longer see backing Ukraine as a worthy cause. Two years into the war in Ukraine, once a destination for American extremists, many within the underground far-right movement in the US are avidly disavowing it and advising followers to stay away. Extremists now see the upcoming election year as tailor-made for activism on the home front.
Read more from Ben Makuch’s piece on this story here:
The World Bank’s private investment arm has mobilised nearly $1bn to rebuild Ukraine’s private sector and is shifting its broader investment focus towards equity, its managing director told Reuters.
Speaking ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Makhtar Diop, managing director of the International Finance Corp (IFC) said that around $620m of the funds mobilised for Ukraine – part of a $2bn package announced in December 2022 – are from the investment arm’s own balance sheet and another $360m from external financing.
Diop added: “First of all we need to continue to monitor how the political situation evolves and there are some concerns. We will need to continue mobilising more resources to guarantee a little bit some of the investments that we’re doing because we take a lot of investment on our own balance sheet”
Kyiv views mobilising reconstruction funds – estimated at $400bn – more urgently than ever as signs of donor fatigue are emerging from Europe and the US.
Conflicts elsewhere are on the IFC’s radar as it assesses with the World Bank Group how best to help rebuild Palestinian territories after violence de-escalates, Diop said.
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Ukrainian lawmakers have rebuffed a controversial mobilisation bill
Ukraine’s parliament have refused to debate a controversial bill aimed at drafting more soldiers, amid fierce criticism from lawmakers and the public, reports AFP.
The bill, introduced by the government in December, would toughen penalties for draft dodgers and lower the age of military service from 27 to 25-years-old, but on Thursday was rebuffed by Ukrainian lawmakers. While the bill would also cut compulsory wartime service from an unlimited period to 36 months, the changes have been deeply divisive in a nation exhausted by fighting.
Ukraine, which counts roughly 850,000 soldiers among its ranks, has been trying to boost its numbers as Moscow ramps up pressure and deployments on the frontlines. Although Kyiv does not disclose its losses, independent estimates have put the figure in the tens of thousands. Last month, Zelenskiy warned that the military wanted to mobilise up to half a million people to battle the 600,000 or so Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine.
“Some provisions directly violate human rights, some are not optimally formulated,” said ruling party leader David Arakhamia after a closed door meeting with Ukraine‘s military leaders. “We understand the request of the military command and are ready to meet it. But not all the rules can be supported,” he said, adding that the bill had been returned to the government.
Yaroslav Zheleznyak, an opposition MP from the pro-EU liberal Holos party, said: “In short, there will be no developments under the law on mobilisation. Neither today nor tomorrow. Nor in the near future.”
During a press conference in Tallinn on Thursday, Zelenskiy acknowledged that military-aged Ukrainian men had illegally left the country to evade army service. “If they are of mobilisation age, then they should help Ukraine. And they should be in Ukraine,” he said.
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Hungarian and Ukrainian ministers could meet later this month
Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said he could meet his Ukrainian counterpart on 29 January.
“I am ready, and I continue to reserve January 29th for this meeting in Uzhhorod,” he said.
Meetings between senior officials from the two countries are rare.
Szijjártó is the only EU foreign minister who regularly travels to Russia.
❗️FM Péter Szijjártó announced a potential Hungarian-Ukrainian foreign ministerial meeting in Uzhhorod on January 29th to review bilateral cooperation.
— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) January 11, 2024
👉The minister emphasized the importance of preparation for such high-level meetings to yield significant results adding: "I… pic.twitter.com/SE0lrqkuiu
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Estonian president calls for long-term defence investment
As Ukrainian leaders visit Tallinn today, Estonia’s president, Alar Karis, said the country “has long term commitment to contribute 0.25% of our defence budget during 2024-2027 to provide military support to Ukraine.”
“Lasting peace requires long-term investment in our defence capabilities,” he said, adding:
It is necessary to increase the capability of the European defence industry, to provide to Ukraine what it needs, not tomorrow, but already today. Our firm actions must prevent any further wars of aggression in Europe.
He also said:
We should place no restrictions on the weapons that we provide to Ukraine.
Our appeal to all allies: we must contribute significantly more to defence. Russia & other authoritarian regimes threaten our common values and security.
Russia does not only wish to conquer Ukraine. With other dictators, it has issued a challenge to democratic world. By using weapons acquired from North Korea and other state actors, Putin is also fighting their fight.
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“Ukraine has scaled up drone production, including FPV drones, and is working with all sides to promptly ramp up co-production further,” the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said in Estonia today.
Ukraine has scaled up drone production, including FPV drones, and is working with all sides to promptly ramp up co-production further.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) January 11, 2024
Drones, artillery rounds, the use of frozen Russian assets, Ukraine's accession to the EU and NATO—during President @ZelenskyyUa's visit to… pic.twitter.com/pcbirAmHBK
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Sergiy Tomilenko, president of Ukraine’s national union of journalists, said today that Russian missile strikes which struck a hotel in Kharkiv amounted to “the intimidation of media workers in order to limit the coverage of the war.”
Last night, Russia fired missiles at the third hotel in Kharkiv where journalists were staying. This is the intimidation of media workers in order to limit the coverage of the war in the international media. No - to Russia's war crimes against journalists! @EFJEUROPE @IFJGlobal pic.twitter.com/693XeKhIg0
— Sergiy Tomilenko (@Stommedia) January 11, 2024
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Kremlin accuses US of pressuring Europe over Russian asset seizures
The US has been accused by the Kremlin of trying to pressure European countries into backing the seizure of frozen Russian assets to help finance the rebuilding of Ukraine, reports Reuters.
In comments to the RIA news agency, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “They [the US] are trying to put pressure on the Europeans. There is a very paradoxical situation here because the main body of our assets is in Europe and not in America.”
Peskov was responding to a Bloomberg report published on Wednesday which suggested that the US president, Joe Biden’s, administration was backing legislation that would allow it to seize some of the frozen Russian assets to help pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine.
The US and its allies have prohibited transactions with Russia’s central bank and finance ministry, blocking around $300bn of sovereign Russian assets in the west. The move came after Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Peskov has previously said that Moscow has a list of US, European and other assets that would be seized if western countries pressed ahead with plans to confiscate the Russian assets.
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Pro-war Russian political activist questioned over terrorism offences
Sergei Udaltsov, a Russian left-wing activist, has been questioned over terrorism offences, says his lawyer.
Speaking to the state news agency Tass, his lawyer, Violetta Volkova, said on Thursday that a criminal case was opened against Udaltsov for “justifying terrorism”, electronic devices were confiscated during a search, and he was taken away for questioning. Volkova added that she did not know what the criminal case was connected with.
According to AP, the leader of the Left Front, a group of left-wing political parties that oppose president Vladimir Putin and are affiliated to Russia’s Communist party, posted on Telegram on Thursday morning to say police were banging on his door trying to search his home.
Udaltsov was imprisoned in 2014 and sentenced to four and a half years on charges related to his role in organising a May 2012 protest against Putin that turned violent. He protested against his sentence by going on hunger strike before being released in 2017. Udaltsov was also briefly allied with the imprisoned opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
While multiple activists, lawyers and opposition figures have been detained and jailed in Russia since Putin invaded Ukraine, Udaltsov has broken with them, says AP, as he has supported the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, while remaining critical of Putin.
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Ukraine has been building barricades and digging trenches as the country’s focus shifts towards defence, reports Reuters.
On Wednesday, Reuters reporters visited trenches being dug with an excavator and shovels at an undisclosed location in the Chernihiv region near the Russian border. Below is a detailed write-up from the news agency:
“When the civilians have done their job (building the positions), we will densely mine it,” Ukraine’s joint forces commander, Serhiy Nayev, who oversees the northern military sector, told reporters at the site.
Last month, Reuters reporters visited newly built Ukrainian trenches in Chornobyl near the border with Belarus – a Russian ally used by Moscow as a staging ground for the February 2022 invasion. A large military engineering vehicle churned through the snowy ground as it carved out a wide anti-tank ditch.
“[The works are ongoing] along the whole Northern Operational Zone. These works are currently underway in Sumy region, Chernihiv region, here in the Kyiv direction,” Nayev said at the site.
“Concrete structures, barbed wire, … ‘dragon’s teeth’ [concrete barricades] …; they will be mined and barbed wire will be put on them. This will be a continuous concrete obstacle for armoured vehicles,” he said.
Near Kupiansk, Ukraine’s military showed Reuters reporters newly built defensive lines, but said the exact location could not be disclosed publicly for security reasons. A military engineer using the call sign ‘Lizard’ said they typically put down the ‘dragon’s teeth’ first, followed by coils of razor wire and then mines, if they use them.
“I believe most of these barriers should have been built much earlier, probably in the spring. It takes too much time,” he said.
Several hundred metres behind the “dragon’s teeth”, work was under way to expand a network of personnel trenches reinforced with wooden beams where there were also living quarters and wooden bunk beds.
Lynx, the other serviceman, said Ukraine was trying to minimise the use of mines for its fortifications to avoid leaving dangerous munitions on its territory. “This is our land. We wouldn’t want to litter it so much,” he said.
Reuters reporters also visited new defensive lines near the north-eastern city of Kupiansk on 28 December, where they witnessed rows of white concrete barricades and coils of razor wire stretching across an open field for more than a kilometre. Additionally, they reported seeing trenches with rudimentary living quarters being dug under cover of darkness.
In November last year, Zelenskiy announced that Ukraine was “significantly enhancing” fortifications after a counteroffensive that it launched in June was unable to rapidly punch through Russian lines. He also said Ukraine’s defensive constructions needed to be boosted. Work was then accelerated around the three towns, in eastern parts of the Donetsk region, and in the regions of Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Rivne and Volyn.
Stronger fortifications would slow down Russian troops and suck fewer Ukrainian forces into defence, freeing them up from the front so they could, for instance, receive more training, said Jack Watling, senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute. Speaking to Reuters, Watling said: “The Ukrainians are now shifting on to a defensive posture because their offensive has culminated. On the Ukrainian side, they are trying to minimise their own casualties, but also regenerate offensive combat power.”
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During Wednesday night’s Republican debate in Des Moines, candidates Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley diverged on the topic of Ukraine, which mirrors the issue in Congress over funding the war.
Haley, who was Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nation, said she was for the US supporting Ukraine, which she said is “a pro-American, freedom-loving country”. But DeSantis is against sending more money to Ukraine, preferring to “focus on our issues here at home”.
You can read more on the key takeaways from Republican debate, including the comments about aid to Ukraine here:
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Estonia’s minister of foreign affairs, Margus Tsahkna, has posted an image of Zelenskiy arriving in Tallinn overnight. The Ukrainian president travelled to the Estonian capital along with his foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba.
Tsahkna wrote: “It’s a great honour to welcome good friends and allies, Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Dmytro Kuleba in Tallinn. We give a strong message and confirmation to Ukraine that Estonia stands firmly by their side, and together we will win this war.”
It’s a great honour to welcome good friends & allies @ZelenskyyUa & @DmytroKuleba in Tallinn 🇪🇪.
— Margus Tsahkna (@Tsahkna) January 11, 2024
We give a strong message & confirmation to #Ukraine 🇺🇦 that #Estonia stands firmly by their side & together we will win this war! pic.twitter.com/WGeI8XaJxJ
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Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania have signed an agreement on demining the Black Sea
Nato members Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania have signed an agreement on demining the Black Sea to ensure safe waters after Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Top defence officials from Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding in Istanbul establishing the Mine Countermeasures Naval Group in the Black Sea (MCM Black Sea), which will oversee de-mining operations, say AFP. Neither Russia nor Ukraine provided immediate comment.
“It is of vital importance to be protected from security risks that war could cause,” the Turkish defence minister, Yaşar Güler, said at the signing ceremony. “With the start of the war, mines drifting in the Black Sea posed a threat. To overcome this, we have come this far with joint efforts of our Bulgarian and Romanian allies,” he added.
Güler emphasised that the initiative would involve only the ships of the three Black Sea littoral states, adding that other countries’ contributions would be possible when conditions were met.
The Russian navy mined Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline in the early stages of its invasion nearly two years ago. Some of the mines have since washed up in the waters of Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, endangering shipping and complicating Ukraine’s efforts to break through a Russian naval blockade.
In December, Ukrainian authorities said a Panama-flagged ship arriving to collect grain hit a Russian naval mine in the Black Sea, injuring two sailors. Ukraine has created a maritime corridor for commercial ships which first pass near the shores of Bulgaria and Romania.
Turkey controls Black Sea maritime and naval traffic, which must pass Istanbul’s Bosphorus strait and the Dardanelles before reaching the Aegean and Mediterranean seas.
With the outbreak of war, Turkey invoked a clause of an international treaty called the Montreux convention banning the passage of naval vessels from non-littoral countries to and from the Black Sea.
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Here are some images coming out from Tallinn this morning, where the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is meeting Estonia’s president, Alar Karis, and other officials.
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A ceasefire would only benefit Russia, says Zelenskiy during visit to Estonia
A ceasefire in the Russian-Ukrainian war would not lead to political dialogue, and would only benefit Russia, Zelenskiy said on Thursday during a visit to Estonia. Zelenskiy is currently meeting with the country’s leaders as a part of a wider tour of the Baltic region.
According to Reuters, the Ukrainian president said that a ceasefire would be beneficial to Russia as it would allow Moscow to boost its supply of munitions. Russia was negotiating missile purchases from Iran and Russian forces had received more than 1m rounds of ammunition from North Korea, he added.
He also claimed that Russia has a deficit of armaments and that a ceasefire would help it catch up.
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Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine is going through “hard times” due to recent fatal shelling by Kyiv, its governor said on Thursday. Speaking at an expo in Moscow, as reported by AFP, governor of Belgorod oblast, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said that residents were “afraid” and that “not everyone can physically cope with it”.
Hundreds of residents including children have already left the Russian border region’s capital city following attacks that have left over two dozen dead. Gladkov said:
The Belgorod region is going through hard times. What Belgorodians have endured and are enduring, not everyone can physically cope with it. Everyone is afraid, but it is one thing when you sit and are afraid alone, and another thing when we cope with this misfortune together.
Schools near the border have switched to remote learning due to the threat of further attacks and homes have been destroyed, he added. The evacuations represent a frustration for the Kremlin, which has tried to maintain normality ahead of presidential elections this spring.
It has vowed that Russia’s military would do “everything” it can to stop the attacks, and has responded with deadly strikes on Ukrainian territory.
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will be continuing on his tour of Baltic states today, with a visit to Estonia, where he will meet with the country’s leaders.
On Wednesday, Zelenskiy met his Lithuanian counterpart, Gitanas Nausėda, in Vilnius and held a bilateral meeting. The pair took part in a news conference for the press, at which Zelenskiy warned that western hesitation on aid to Ukraine would help Putin. He added that “Russia can be stopped”.
Zelenskiy also expressed his desire to see action on Ukraine gaining Nato membership at this year’s Nato summit, adding that 2024 would be decisive for Ukraine and its allies.
Following the meeting, the Lithuanian government announced that it had approved a €200m (£172m) package of long-term military assistance to Ukraine.
AP have outlined what Zelenskiy’s day will look like: he is to meet with Estonia’s president and prime minister and then address the parliament before heading to Latvia. We will bring updates on his comments and today’s events in Tallinn as they come in.
The first foreign visit in 2024 is to Lithuania and other Baltic States.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 10, 2024
This is more than just a visit of gratitude. This is a visit of confidence—the shared confidence of the nations bordering Russia.
We stand together and we are not going to lose our unity. pic.twitter.com/LEZ5qgS0iJ
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13 people injured after two Russian missiles struck a Kharkiv hotel
Two Russian missiles struck a hotel late on Wednesday in the centre of Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, reports Reuters. The attack has left 13 people injured, including foreign journalists local authorities said. One person had been seriously injured, the regional governor added.
Posting on Telegram, the Kharkiv governor, Oleh Synehubov, described the strike taking place at about 10.30pm, local time, and involving S-300 missiles in the city’s Kyiv district. “Nine of those injured have been taken to medical facilities,” wrote Synehubov. “One of them, a 35-year-old man, is in serious condition.”
Thirteen people were injured, including a Turkish citizen and a Georgian, the prosecutor general’s office said. According to AFP, Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov, 30 civilians were present when two missiles hit a hotel in the centre of Kharkiv. There were no military personnel there, he confirmed. Several other buildings, including two apartment blocks, were also reported damaged in the latest strike.
Pictures emerging from the area show blown out windows blown out and balconies destroyed with large piles of rubble in the street below. Emergency teams have been making their way through gaping holes in the facade to sift through rubble inside.
Across the border, the Russian defence ministry said it had downed four Ukrainian drones over the Tula, Kaluga and Rostov regions. Voronezh region governor, Aleksandr Gusev also reported that a Ukrainian drone had hit “the roof of a non-residential building” overnight, although said there was “no harm done”.
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Summary
Two Russian missiles hit a hotel in Kharkiv late on Wednesday, injuring 11 people, one seriously, said the regional governor, Oleh Synehubov. Visiting Turkish journalists were among the injured, he wrote. Earlier, a 48-year-old woman was killed and a school partially destroyed in Russian airstrikes against Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine’s state emergency service said.
Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who are vying for the Republican presidential nomination in the US, were split over continuing support for Ukraine’s defence in a debate on Wednesday night. DeSantis suggested it was not a top US priority and accused Haley of wanting an “open-ended commitment” of US money and arms. Haley cast supporting Ukraine and stopping Russia’s aggression as a vital US priority. “You do not have to choose” between priorities like the US-Mexico border and Ukraine, she said. “This is about keeping America safe. This is about preventing war.” Donald Trump did not show up.
Ukraine is effectively a test site for North Korean nuclear missiles because Kim Jong-un’s regime is supplying Russia with rockets that can deliver an atomic bomb, South Korea has said. “By exporting missiles to Russia, the DPRK uses Ukraine as the test site of its nuclear-capable missiles,” said the South Korean ambassador to the UN, Hwang Joon-kook, using the official name of North Korea. One of the missiles flew 460km, the distance from a North Korean launch site to South Korean’s city of Pusan. “From the ROK [South Korean] standpoint, it amounts to a simulated attack, Hwang said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, met his Lithuanian counterpart, Gitanas Nausėda, in Vilnius on Wednesday. The surprise visit marked the start of Zelenskiy’s tour of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – all former Soviet republics and now EU and Nato members. In a statement on X, Zelenskiy called the countries “reliable friends and principled partners” to Ukraine.
Western hesitation on aid to Ukraine helps Putin, Zelenskiy warned in a news conference with Nausėda. Zelenskiy expressed his desire to see action on Ukraine gaining Nato membership at this year’s Nato summit, adding that 2024 would be decisive for Ukraine and its allies. At the news conference in Lithuania, he said: “Russia can be stopped”.
A €200m (£172m) package of long-term military assistance to Ukraine has been approved by the Lithuanian government. The news was announced after a bilateral meeting between Zelenskiy and Nausėda on Wednesday.
Pope Francis has expressed his concern that international attention is shifting away from the nearly two-year-old Russian war against Ukraine, and warned that it risks becoming a “forgotten” war.
An “explosive” new attack drone has been developed by Iran for Russia’s war in Ukraine, Sky News reported. The existence of a jet engine-powered version of the Shahed drone has been reported in recent days.
Russia accidentally bombed a Russian village, said the UK Ministry of Defence, with “inadequate training” and “crew fatigue” among Russian forces likely exacerbating accidents.
A majority (63%) of Russians continue to support the full-scale war against Ukraine, according to a poll released by the University of Chicago’s nonpartisan National Opinion Research Center (Norc).
Ukraine’s agricultural product exports via its alternative Black Sea corridor reached 4.8m tonnes in December, surpassing the maximum monthly total exported via a former UN-brokered grain deal, brokers said on Wednesday.
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