Tag: 2022 Russia-Ukraine News

Kremlin expresses “extreme concern” over claim of Ukrainian missile downed in Belarus

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Russian forces shelled the entire frontline of the Donetsk region on Thursday night into Friday morning, according to the head of the regional military administration, as fighting in the eastern Ukrainian region grinds on.

Pavlo Kyrylenko said the towns of Vuhledar and Kurakhivska were among the settlements that came under attack. The city of Kostyantynivka, which is some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the front line, was hit by rocket fire on Thursday, damaging schools and a theater.

The Ukrainian military also reported artillery shelling of Maryinka and Avdiivka in Donetsk on Friday morning. It said Russian forces were intensifying their assaults around several settlements immediately to the west and north of Donetsk city, an area where the front lines have changed little since the Russian invasion.

Much of the war’s fiercest fighting has raged around the key Donetsk city of Bakhmut. Both sides have been locked in brutal battle there since Russian forces launched their siege on the city in earnest in May.

An adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovych, said on Thursday that Ukrainian and Russian forces were both experiencing heavy troop losses in Bakhmut, and the nearby city of Soledar, describing the fighting there as “very serious.”

Elsewhere: Russian forces attacked several parts of the eastern Luhansk region, where Ukrainian forces have made modest gains since September, according to the Ukrainian military.

In the north-eastern region of Sumy, officials reported cross-border mortar fire, the consequences of which were unclear.

And in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, authorities said that nearly twenty settlements were shelled, several of them some distance from the front lines, damaging apartments and civilian infrastructure.

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December 30, 2022
Russian foreign minister gives Ukraine ultimatum over 4 occupied regions

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The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has neutralized more than 4,500 cyberattacks on the country this year, an official said Monday.

Ilya Vitiuk, head of the SBU cybersecurity department said in a statement that Ukraine had “entered 2022 with eight years of hybrid warfare experience behind us,” adding that “at the time of the invasion, we were already ready for the worst scenarios.”

“And the massive cyberattacks that we repelled in January and February became additional ‘training’ before the invasion,” he said.

The scale of cyberattacks is now much wider, particularly compared to previous years, he said. In 2020, nearly 800 cyberattacks were recorded, while in 2021 it jumped to 1,400, and in 2022 the number increased more than three times.

“Today, the aggressor country launches an average of more than 10 cyberattacks per day. Fortunately, Ukrainian society does not even know about most of them,” Vitiuk said.

He added that attackers are most likely to target energy, logistics, military facilities, government databases and information resources.

“We monitor risks and threats in real-time 24/7. We know most of the hackers from the Russian special services working against us by name. We are working on documenting them,” Vitiuk said, declaring they would face hearings at a future international military tribunal.

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December 27, 2022
Viktor Bout says he “wholeheartedly” supports Ukraine war and would volunteer to fight for Russia

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As Ukraine grapples with an energy crisis, the country will have to set priorities for electricity supply, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.

“The first priority is critical infrastructure, in particular water and heat supply facilities and hospitals,” Shmyhal told a government meeting. “The second priority is the military-industrial complex — facilities that work for the defense of the state. The principle, ‘Everything for the front,’ remains absolutely unchanged.”

He said the third priority is businesses that produce essential products — for example, bakeries and dairies. And the residential sector was fourth.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, CEO of state electricity generator Ukrenergo, said that repairs were continuing after the last wave of Russian missile attacks on Monday.

Kudrytskyi said substations in southern Ukraine and power plants were damaged.

“Several power plants were forced to stop generating electricity after the damage. Now we are gradually trying to restore generation at thermal power plants, to bring them to the levels that existed on the eve of the last attack.”

Kudrytskyi said that since Oct. 10, more than 1,000 heavy missiles and drones have been fired at energy infrastructure facilities. The major difficulties with electricity supply were currently in the Odesa region, Kherson region, and Kharkiv region.

Nuclear generation has provided a little more than half of Ukraine’s needs in the recent past but Kudrytskyi said said the country needed other types of energy generation.

“There is not a single thermal power plant in Ukraine that was not damaged by the attacks,” he said. “Similarly, almost all hydroelectric power plants have suffered some damage and have a limited ability to generate electricity.”

He said as repairs continued, he hoped the country could transition to planned outages in the next few days. Much of Ukraine has also suffered emergency power cuts in recent weeks.

Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said more Russian targeting of infrastructure could be expected, and the energy supply might also be affected by heavy frosts.

“Ukraine has already received power equipment worth millions of euros. Our task today is not only to use the equipment for rapid restoration works but also to form a stock of equipment that may be urgently needed after the next shelling,” he said.

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December 10, 2022
Power and water supply have been largely restored in the city of Kherson, officials say

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OPEC and its allies decided Sunday to stick with their existing policy of curtailing oil output, just hours before new Western sanctions on Russian crude exports come into force.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and other major oil producers including Russia, said they would continue to restrict supply by 2 million barrels per day, a policy set in October that started last month and is due to run through the end of 2023.

In a statement, OPEC said Sunday’s meeting — held via video conference — had reaffirmed the decision taken in October, adding that the group was ready to meet at any time to “address market developments if necessary.”

The cuts agreed to in October, the biggest since the start of the pandemic, drew criticism from the United States. The Biden administration called them “shortsighted” and said they would hurt low- and middle-income countries by pushing energy prices higher.

Since then, oil prices have instead pulled back, as traders have focused on how ongoing coronavirus lockdowns in China and global recession fears could hit demand.

Markets could be volatile in the coming days, however. Europe’s ban on importing oil from Russia shipped by sea kicks in on Monday, injecting extra uncertainty into the outlook for energy supply.

G7 nations, the European Union and Australia agreed Friday to impose a price cap of $60 a barrel on Russian oil shipped to other countries that have not adopted an embargo. The move, which also takes effect Monday, is aimed at depriving the Kremlin of revenue while avoiding a price shock by keeping Russian oil flowing to some markets.

Moscow has previously threatened to retaliate by cutting off oil supply to countries that adhere to the price cap.

What Ukraine is saying: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the decision to set the price cap at $60 a “weak position.”

“The logic is obvious: if the price limit for Russian oil is $60 instead of, for example, $30, which Poland and the Baltic countries talked about, then the Russian budget will receive about a hundred billion dollars a year,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Saturday. “This money will go not only to the war and not only to Russia’s further sponsoring of other terrorist regimes and organizations.”

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December 4, 2022
November 27, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

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Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is seen on November 24. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

The head of Ukraine’s nuclear energy provider says the company has received information that Russian forces may be leaving the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

“We are now observing signs that the Russian invaders may be preparing to leave,” Petro Kotin, the head of Energoatom, said in a statement Sunday.

“First of all, a lot of publications began to appear in the Russian media that the Zaporizhzhia NPP should perhaps be left alone, perhaps it should be handed over to the (International Atomic Energy Agency) for control,” Kotin said in an interview with Ukrainian media Sunday. “It’s like, you know, they’re packing and they’re stealing whatever they can find.”

The IAEA has not released any information supporting Kotin’s statement, and CNN has reached out to the UN nuclear watchdog for comment.

The head of Energoatom emphasized that “it is still too early to say that the Russian military is leaving the plant,” but that they are “preparing.”

Kotin also claimed that Russians “crammed everything they could into the Zaporizhzhia NPP site — both military equipment and personnel, trucks, probably with weapons and explosives,” and that they mined the territory of the plant.

Remember: Zaporizhzhia is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power facility, which provided up to 20% of the country’s electricity before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has been under Russian control since March.

The plant and the area around it, including the nearby city of Enerhodar, have endured persistent shelling that has raised fears of a nuclear accident through the interruption of the power supply to the plant. Russia and Ukraine continue to blame each other for the shelling.

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November 27, 2022
November 26, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

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Interior of Invincibility Point in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Maria Kostenko/CNN)

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed to local authorities, including in the capital of Kyiv, to do more to build out his government’s much-heralded “Invincibility Points” – which are popup stations offering shelter and services, such as power-charging facilities, internet connections and hot water.

The government announced plans to provide emergency support for civilians struggling without electricity and heating last week, just a couple of days before the latest round of Russian air strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure led to further significant disruptions.

But in his Friday night address, Zelensky criticized the program’s rollout, especially in the capital, where he said only those points deployed at the railway station and at State Emergency Services facilities were working properly.

“Other points still need to be improved, to put it mildly,” he added. “Kyiv residents need more protection.”

Visiting the “Invincibility Points”: CNN teams visited three of the government-advertised resource centers in the Ukrainian capital. Two of them, both SES-run facilities, were functioning, while a third located at a school was not.

At one location, in the Obolonskyi district in the north of the city, CNN spoke with Tetiana, who said her apartment had been without power and heat for more than 50 hours. During that time, she had also been without mobile phone service.

“We saw this (‘Invincibility) Point’ on the map and decided to try it,” she said.

Tetiana, left, and Larysa inside an Invincibility Point in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Maria Kostenko/CNN)

Seated at a simple desk along one side of the roughly 30-square-meter (about 323 square feet) tent, its sides padded for warmth, she told us she was happy she could get online again. Her employer makes souvenirs, and the approaching holiday season is always a busy time, she said. “The internet is great here; I can do my work,” she said.

Another resident, Larysa, was also impressed with the Wi-Fi available at the same site because it meant she could reconnect with social media.

“The internet is fast; I’m finally on TikTok,” she laughed, adding, “I am looking for a job because I am from Lviv. I have recently moved to Kyiv.”

A resident named Oleksiy told CNN he had also been without power at home for more than two days and was also using the internet provided to look for work.

“I have a wife and two children, aged 5 months old and 9 years old, at home. I will not bring my children here because it’s a long walk, but I will definitely be coming here again,” he said.

Those interviewed for this post declined to provide their last names to CNN.

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November 26, 2022
November 20, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

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The Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, commented Sunday on an incident in eastern Luhansk, saying Russian servicemen “are those who are fighting and committing treachery” and that “returning fire is not a war crime.”

Russia has accused Ukraine of war crimes after video emerged on social media, which Moscow says shows Russian soldiers killed after surrendering to Ukrainian forces.

The precise details of what happened remain unclear.

“From some pieces of video about the incident with the Russian military in Luhansk region it may be concluded that using the staged surrender, the Russians committed a war crime – they opened fire on the military of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Lubinets said in a Telegram post on Sunday, implying that the Russians from the video may have acted as if they would surrender but did not.

“In this case, persons among the Russian servicemen cannot be considered prisoners of war, but are those who are fighting and committing treachery,” he said. “Returning fire is not a war crime. On the contrary, those who want to use the protection of international law to kill must be punished.”

What the video appears to show: The edited video purports to show captured Russian soldiers in an act of surrender, with several men lying on the ground on their fronts with their hands over their heads. More soldiers are seen emerging one by one from a building and lying down next to them in the yard.

A voice apparently directing the surrender can be heard shouting: “Come on out, one by one. Which of you is the officer? Has everyone come out? Come out!”

After about 10 men are down on the ground, another soldier emerges from the same building and appears to open fire in the direction of the Ukrainian soldiers conducting the surrender.

A short burst of gunfire is heard before the video clip ends abruptly.

A second clip filmed later from a drone above the same location shows the bodies of what appear to be the same Russian soldiers in the yard, most just a few meters from where they had been lying in the first clip.

CNN has been unable to verify exactly what happened in the first video clip, and it is unclear exactly what happened in the period that elapsed between the first clip and the filming of the drone footage.

The UN investigates: Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for the United Nations Human Rights Office, said, according to Reuters: “We are aware of the videos and we are looking into them. Allegations of summary executions of people hors de combat should be promptly, fully and effectively investigated, and any perpetrators held to account.”

More context: A UN panel of experts said in September that their investigation has found evidence that war crimes have been committed during Russia’s war in Ukraine, including cases of rape and torture of children.

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November 20, 2022
November 19, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

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Russia has accused Ukraine of war crimes after video emerged on social media that Moscow said shows Russian soldiers killed after surrendering to Ukrainian forces.

The video, which has been geolocated by CNN, was filmed on the outskirts of the village of Makiivka, which is in the eastern Luhansk region, about 25 miles (roughly 40 kilometers) northeast of the city of Lyman.

It is unclear when the video was filmed, but it is most likely to have been either on Nov. 12 — the date the video first appeared online — or in the days immediately preceding it. The village was only declared liberated from Russian control in an announcement by the Luhansk region military administration on Nov. 13.

The edited video purports to show captured Russian soldiers in an act of surrender, with several men lying on the ground on their fronts with their hands over their heads. More soldiers are seen emerging one by one from a building and lying down next to them in the yard.

A voice apparently directing the surrender can be heard shouting: “Come on out, one by one. Which of you is the officer? Has everyone come out? Come out!”

After about 10 men are down on the ground, another soldier emerges from the same building and appears to open fire in the direction of the Ukrainian soldiers conducting the surrender.

A short exchange of gunfire is heard before the video clip ends abruptly.

A second clip filmed later from a drone above the same location shows the bodies of what appear to be the same Russian soldiers in the yard, most just a few meters from where they had been lying in the first clip. What appear to be pools of blood are clearly visible in several places.

CNN has been unable to verify exactly what happened in the first video clip, and it is unclear exactly what happened in the period that elapsed between the first clip and the filming of the drone footage.

Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for the United Nations Human Rights Office, said, according to Reuters: “We are aware of the videos and we are looking into them. Allegations of summary executions of people hors de combat should be promptly, fully and effectively investigated, and any perpetrators held to account.”

A statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry denounced what it said was “the deliberate and methodical killing of more than ten immobilized Russian servicemen … by direct shots to the head,” alleging it was the latest war crime committed by Ukraine in the war.

CNN has reached out to the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ General Staff for comment on the video clips twice in a 24-hour period but has yet to receive a reply.

A spokesman with Ukraine’s 80th airborne brigade told CNN that the drone footage had been shot by the brigade’s air reconnaissance unit. Asked to verify whether the Ukrainian soldiers in the clip were also members of his brigade, the spokesman would only say he did not recognize any of the men in the clip.

Executing prisoners of war is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as is the act of feigning surrender.

Earlier in the week, in a briefing with journalists before the Makiivka videos had come into wide circulation, the head of the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, said that the UN had received credible reports of the torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war by both Russia and Ukraine, Reuters reported.

When asked to compare the level of abuses committed, Bogner said the mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners by Russians was “fairly systematic,” whereas she said it was “not systematic” for Ukraine to mistreat Russian soldiers, according to Reuters.

More context: A UN panel of experts said in September that their investigation has found evidence that war crimes have been committed during Russia’s war in Ukraine, including cases of rape and torture of children.

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November 19, 2022
November 13, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

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Residents use their mobile phones near a Starlink satellite-based broadband station in Kherson, Ukraine, on November 13. (AFP/Getty Images)

The head of the regional military administration in the Kherson region shared an update on the state of liberated villages Sunday, including rules imposed under martial law and the restoration of key services.

Despite the return of Ukrainian control, residents should stay out of recently liberated areas for risk of Russian attacks, the official, Yaroslav Yanushevich, wrote in a Telegram post Sunday.

“There remains a high probability of enemy shelling on the right (west) bank of Dnipro River in Kherson region. The Russian army, when fleeing, starts fighting with civilians out of hopelessness. We have repeatedly seen this in many liberated settlements,” he warned.

But Ukrainian leaders say they have successfully reintroduced some essential services in the region.

“It has already been possible to restore the supply of natural gas to more than 300 residents of the liberated settlements of the Kherson region,” Yanushevich wrote.

He also said that mobile connection has been restored in the city of Kherson.

“LTE from Kyivstar (the Ukrainian mobile operator) is already working in the city center on the square near the Regional State Administration,” he said.

A CNN team saw one communication tower in Kherson city Sunday.

Yanushevich reported that during the Russian occupation of the city of Kherson, most pharmacies stopped working. He assured that “the pharmacies will resume work after demining of the territories.”

The region remains under martial law, the official said. Ukrainian authorities have banned water transportation in the region through Nov. 19, saying it’s for the protection of residents.

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November 13, 2022
October 9, 2022 Russia-Ukraine News

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Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge, on October 8. (AFP/Getty Images)

The Kremlin is intent on showing the attack on the Crimea bridge wasn’t that serious and that the crucial lifeline from the Russian mainland to the illegally-annexed Crimean Peninsula will be back to normal soon.

The physical damage can be restored — Russia immediately dispatched a large emergency team to the site — but the damage to Russia’s prestige and, more importantly, to the image of Vladimir Putin, won’t be that easy to repair.

This is his bridge, his project, built with the equivalent of almost $4 billion from the Russian treasury. It’s a symbolic “wedding band” uniting Mother Russia and Ukraine, or at least a region that still legally belongs to Ukraine, crucial not only to Putin’s war effort but to his obsession with bringing Ukraine back under Russia’s control.

Putin’s February 21st address to the Russian people, delivered just before he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, laid bare his warped view of history. Ukraine, he insists, is not really an independent country: “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” he claimed. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.”

That speech, one of the most revealing of his presidency, makes clear that this fratricidal war against Ukraine is very personal to him. For many years he has been fixated on Peter the Great, the Russian czar who founded St. Petersburg, the city in which Putin was born and raised. I once visited the city administration office in which Putin worked in the early 1990s after he returned from his job as a KGB operative in East Germany. On the wall above his desk was a portrait of Peter the Great.

In June of this year, as the grinding war in Ukraine entered its fourth month, Putin again compared himself to Peter the Great, insisting that Peter, who conquered land from Sweden, was “returning” to Russia what actually belonged to it.

Putin now, apparently, believes that returning Ukraine to Russia is his historic destiny. He likely sees the galling attack on the Crimea bridge not only as an attack on the Russian homeland, but as a personal affront. And he is likely to respond viciously.

Already, a day after the attack, Russian forces are bombing civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine. Hardline supporters of Putin are urging more strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure. Western leaders warn that an increasingly frustrated Putin might resort to using tactical nuclear weapons. Military experts say he could retaliate asymmetrically, striking unexpected targets.

For years, Putin has had another obsession: punishing traitors. One month after his forces attacked Ukraine, he threatened to retaliate against any Russians who opposed the war, calling them “fifth column … national traitors” in thrall to the West.

This Sunday, the day after the bridge bombing, he called it a “terrorist attack” whose “authors, executors and masterminds” are the secret services of Ukraine…and “citizens of Russia from foreign countries.”

One thing is clear: as the fighting moves closer to Russia, Vladimir Putin sees his “historic mission” in jeopardy. And that means emotions could outweigh reason. For Ukraine, for Russians who oppose the war, and for the world, this is a dangerous moment.

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October 9, 2022