Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the war in Ukraine, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
Treason, betrayal and grief in Hroza
Fifty-nine people died and six were wounded last week when a Russian missile hit a cafe hosting a wake for a Ukrainain soldier in the village of Hroza. It was one of the worst episodes in Moscow’s bloody war. According to Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency, it was also a story of treason and betrayal, Luke Harding and Phil Caller reported.
For seven months last year, Russian soldiers occupied Hroza. They moved into private houses, looted cars and demanded vodka. Most villagers resented their new foreign overlords. A few welcomed them. They included two brothers, Volodymyr and Dmytro Mamon, who grew up in the village and served as police officers. Both, it is alleged, defected to the Russian side.
In early October, the brothers allegedly began collecting information about a funeral. “Volodymyr Mamon gave this information to the Russians,” the SBU alleges.
The SBU says Mamon knew that the locals who had tipped him off about the event would be inside the cafe. He understood they “would surely die”. Chat messages released by the agency suggest Mamon held a grudge against one attender. In one, he asks to be reminded of the name of the cafe “back in the homeland”. In another, he writes: “Tell me when he is dead.”
An icy mood in the Arctic town of Barentsburg
Until recently, the mostly Russian and Ukrainian residents of the Russian-owned town of Barentsburg have had remarkably warm relations with their predominantly Norwegian Arctic neighbours along the coast in the settlement of Longyearbyen. There were regular cultural exchanges, with visiting symphony orchestras and children’s choirs, chess competitions and sport fixtures.
But since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the two communities have found themselves on the edge of the west’s last remaining interaction point with Russia. And the mood has turned decidedly icy, Miranda Bryant reported.
Visit Svalbard, the official tourism board, no longer promotes travel to either of the Russian settlements in Barentsburg, and most Norwegian tourism operators have stopped going there entirely because of Russia’s invasion. Visit Svalbard has described the Barentsburg tourism company Arctic Travel Company Grumant, owned by mining company Trust Arktikugol, as “an extended arm of the Russian state”.
Ukrainian Black Sea campaign a ray of hope
Ukraine’s counter-offensive on land – designed to liberate the south of the country, and to bisect occupying Russian forces – has been going slowly. Ukrainian brigades equipped with western battle tanks have struggled to advance through minefields and entrenched Russian positions.
In the Black Sea, however, Kyiv has made remarkable progress, as Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh reported. Drones and UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles have destroyed targets in Crimea. These include air defence batteries, a shipyard and the white neo-classical headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Last week satellite images revealed Moscow’s mighty navy has left the deep water port of Sevastopol. It has gone east, to the safer Russian harbour of Novorossiysk.
Meanwhile, merchant ships are sailing again. According to Yurii Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy minister responsible for seaports and maritime, more than 30 vessels have arrived or departed from Odesa and the neighbouring ports of Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi. They have carried cargoes of grain, sunflower oil and metals, including a consignment of iron ore.
Russian sabotage suspected after undersea cable damaged
Extensive damage to an undersea gas pipeline and communications cable connecting Finland and Estonia “could not have occurred by accident” and appears to be the result of a “deliberate … external act”, Finnish authorities said.
“It is likely that the damage to both the gas pipeline and the communication cable is the result of external activity,” the Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, said on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday, adding that the cause of the damage was not yet clear.
Local media cited unnamed government sources as saying Russian sabotage was suspected, Jon Henley and Jill Ambrose reported, while regional security experts said a Russian survey vessel had recently been observed making repeated visits to the vicinity of the Balticconnector pipeline.
“Involvement of a state actor in this job cannot be ruled out,” the director of the security intelligence service (Supo), Antti Pelttari, said on Thursday, as Jon Henley reported. “Who is behind this is a matter for the preliminary investigation. We do not comment in more detail.”
Hamas attack exposes fraying Russia-Israel ties
For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to cultivate strong ties with Israel while also backing the Palestinian cause, an alliance which stems from the Soviet area, Pjotr Sauer wrote in an analysis of Israeli-Russian relations.
Russia’s delicate diplomacy with Israel appeared to bear fruit when the country refused to participate in western sanctions against Russia last year, much to the chagrin of Kyiv, which accused Israel of ignoring the suffering of Ukrainian Jews.
But below the surface, there had been signs that the relationship between Russia and Israel was deteriorating over Putin’s claims that he was fighting “neo-Nazism” in Ukraine, while shifting his country into the orbit of Iran, an arch-enemy of Israel.
And after the worst attack on Israel in decades, the much-touted friendship appears to have vanished.
Russia to revoke ratification of nuclear test ban treaty
A senior Russian diplomat said that Moscow would revoke its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), in a move Washington denounced as jeopardising the “global norm” against nuclear test blasts, Julian Borger reported.
Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian representative to the international nuclear agencies in Vienna, was speaking after Vladimir Putin suggested Moscow might resuming testing for the first time in 33 years, signalling another downward turn in relations between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers
Ulyanov said on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Russia plans to revoke ratification (which took place in the year 2000) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
“The aim is to be on equal footing with the #US who signed the Treaty, but didn’t ratify it. Revocation doesn’t mean the intention to resume nuclear tests.”
Zelenskiy has promised not to attack nuclear plant, watchdog boss says
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says Volodymyr Zelenskiy has promised him that Ukraine will not attack Europe’s biggest nuclear plant as part of its counteroffensive against Russia.
In an interview with Dan Sabbagh, the nuclear watchdog chief said he was most concerned about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant becoming engulfed in fighting between the two sides, but insisted he had obtained a commitment from the Ukrainian president.
“President Zelenskiy has personally assured me that they will not directly bomb or shell it,” Grossi said, although he added that Zelenskiy had told him “all other options are on the table” in terms of taking it back.
That means Ukraine would comply with the first of the five new nuclear safety principles – “do not attack a nuclear power plant” – initially outlined by Grossi at the UN security council at the end of May to avert “a catastrophic accident”.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station was captured by Russia in March 2022, the first time any reactor has been captured in war, prompting fears of a fresh incident in the same country where an explosion at Chornobyl spread radioactivity across Europe in 1986.
