Every week we wrap up essential coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, opinion and more.
Accusations abound after deadly Russian plane crash
Russia accused Kyiv of downing a large military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war to an exchange on Wednesday, after a crash in the Belgorod region that killed all 74 people onboard.
Ukraine neither confirmed nor denied that it had hit the plane but said Moscow had created a “deliberate threat to the life and safety” of its PoWs by failing to warn Kyiv to deconflict the airspace before the swap, Pjotr Sauer, Luke Harding and Andrew Roth reported.
Ukrainian military intelligence said it did not have “reliable and comprehensive” information about who or what was onboard the Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft, which was filmed crashing and exploding in a fireball on Wednesday afternoon.
But the Russian ministry of defence said Kyiv shot down the Il-76, and claimed that the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian PoWs who were to be swapped, along with six crew and three Russian servicemen.
On Thursday, the accusations continued at the UN security council where Russia called the incident “a premeditated, thought-through crime”.
Ukraine pushed back.
“Ukraine was not informed about the number of vehicles, roads and means of transportation of the captives. This alone may constitute intentional actions by Russia to endanger the lives and safety of the prisoners,” deputy ambassador Khrystyna Hayovyshyn said.
How drones froze Ukraine’s frontlines
Luke Harding reports from Kupiansk, where almost two years after Vladimir Putin’s all-out invasion, Moscow has mobilised tens of thousands of troops.
The Kremlin has two immediate goals. One is to take back Kupiansk, the gateway to Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv. Another is to capture the salient town of Avdiivka, not far from the occupied regional capital of Donetsk. So far Moscow has been unable to achieve either military objective. In the process it has lost spectacular numbers of troops, tanks and equipment.
The difficulties experienced by Russia in Synkivka point to a wider problem facing both armies. “It’s a war of armour against projectiles. At the moment projectiles are winning,” Gleb Molchanov, a Ukrainian drone operator, said. The Russians had some tactical success, flushing out Ukrainian soldiers from the forest and a few villages. But, he said, a significant breakthrough was almost impossible in an era of cheap and lethally accurate drones.
Russia grapples with Lenin’s legacy
Vladimir Lenin’s recognition that Ukrainians and Russians should live in different states, and his insistence the industrial Donbas region remain in the Ukrainian republic, helped bring Ukraine into the Soviet fold after it had declared independence in 1918.
“But the price he paid for doing so seems excessive to present-day Russian opinion makers,” notes Serhii Plokhy, a professor of history at Harvard University.
So it is that the centenary of the death of Lenin, one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century, has gone largely uncelebrated in his home country of Russia, Andrew Roth reported. One of Lenin’s most strident critics is Vladimir Putin. The Russian president has blamed Lenin – whose waxy corpse remains embalmed in his Red Square mausoleum – for appeasing nationalists and drawing faultlines in the Soviet system, creating national republics that would later have the right to secede from the USSR.
Yet even for some among the pro-Kremlin conservatives fighting in Ukraine, there is a nostalgia for Lenin as a powerful historical figure. “Every thinking Russian is proud that we had Lenin, that we have Lenin,” wrote Zakhar Prilepin, a writer and paramilitary leader.
Fighting to stop the world forgetting
In a Guardian Long Read, Olesya Khromeychuk writes about the battle to keep Ukraine in the hearts and minds of the international community.
This will be a year of choices, she writes.
“Billions of people in dozens of countries will go to the polls and exercise the right to make their voices heard. Of course, not every election serves as a genuine expression of people’s will, and there are also those nations where many either take their right to vote for granted because they never had to fight for it, or feel so disenfranchised that they don’t think their vote matters. In 2024, wherever we are in the world, we can’t afford to have our choices made for us. We are obliged to exercise our agency, however limited it might seem.
“We have the power to elect political representatives who can enact changes that will outlast their time in office. We need to support politicians who view Russia’s war not as an inconvenience to their economies, but understand that tolerance of a warmongering state is what led us to this situation in the first place. We need to hold accountable those leaders who allowed Russia to enjoy impunity after 2014, who benefited from continued business with the aggressor country and thus contributed to the escalation in 2022.”
UK gives evidence of Russian-North Korean arms deal violations to UN
Andrew Roth revealed exclusively this week that the UK has provided satellite photographs of North Korean cargo shipments to Russia to UN experts as part of an attempt to trigger an official investigation into arms deals in violation of international sanctions.
Intelligence imagery taken between September and December shows three Russian ships, the Maia, Angara and Maria, loading containers at North Korea’s revived Najin port before transiting to Russian ports in the far east. North Korea has been accused of supplying ballistic missiles and hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to the Russian government for its war in Ukraine – dealings that are in violation of international law.
The deliveries have been cited as enabling military strikes against Ukraine in December and January that “killed dozens of people and injured hundreds more”.
