Dec 26 Buonasera Mag
Day 305: RUmissiles Kyselivka Kherson Bakhmut Engels Saratov Putin RUtaxes Iran GasPrices China- A&P- Podolyak UKDef Vega Kuleba Nichols Battistini Maloletka Hunt CEPA Sommerville DefenceUA
Catching up…
EA Worldview’s Ukraine Up-date- hop over to Scott’s amazing hourly Ukraine up-date page. I’ll fill in with some bits and bobs.
Stories we’re following…
In his Christmas address, President Zelensky said that Ukrainians would create their Christmas miracle, by remaining unbowed, despite Russian attacks that have left millions without power. Speaking 10 months to the day since Russia invaded, Zelensky said that while freedom came at a high price, slavery would cost even more.
Russian forces launched more than 40 rocket attacks on Ukraine on Sunday. Dozens of towns in the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia were shelled by Moscow’s troops in the previous 24 hours, Ukraine’s military said in an update early this morning.
The only church in the village of Kyselivka in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region has been destroyed by Russian shelling, according to its defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov.
At least 16 people were killed and 64 injured in Russia’s shelling of the Kherson region on Christmas Eve, the region’s governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said. Russian forces “opened fire on the Kherson region 71 times” with artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and mortars, Yanushevych said.
Blasts were heard at Russia’s Engels airbase hundreds of miles from frontlines in Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian media outlets reported early on Monday. The RBC-Ukraine news agency reported that two explosions took place.
Three Russian military personnel were killed early on Monday when a Ukrainian drone attacked a base in Russia’s Saratov region, Russian news agencies reported, citing the defence ministry.
Russian forces’ rate of advance in the Bakhmut has probably slowed in area recent days, according to analysts. In its latest update, the US thinktank ISW cited one Russian military blogger as saying that Ukrainian forces had pushed back elements of the Russian private mercenary company, the Wagner group, to positions they held days ago.
Putin blamed the west for starting the conflict in Ukraine in 2014 by toppling a pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in the Maidan revolution protests. But he told Rossiya 1 state television that the geopolitical conflict with the west was not “so dangerous”.
Medvedev urges ‘security guarantees’ for Russia. He said that in order to “normalize the situation” (Russia’s war against Ukraine) which could lead to a Third World War, Russia needs “security guarantees,” reported Russian state media Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Russia’s parliament is preparing to introduce a higher taxation rate for people who have left the county, as many have since the war in Ukraine began in February. Some local media reported that as many as 700,000 fled after the announcement of a mobilisation drive to call up new troops to join the fight in September. The government rejected that figure at the time.
Russia to provide Iran with 24 fighter jets ‘very soon’. Russia will supply 24 Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets “very soon” to Iran, whose air force is lacking high-quality military aircraft, Israeli television channel i24NEWS reported, citing unnamed Western intelligence sources.
Russia was hoping to crush Europe over the winter by weaponsing energy supplies, but that hasn’t happened. Gas prices continued plunging throughout Europe over the last days. TTF futures for January closed at €85 on Friday — levels not seen since May.
China’s FM Wang Yi defended his country’s position on the war in Ukraine and indicated that Beijing will deepen ties with Moscow in the coming year. China will “deepen strategic mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation” with Russia, Wang said in a video address, according to an official text of his remarks.
Putin and Xi Jinping will speak before the end of the year, Tass reported. It provided no details of the timing or format of these talks, citing Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying the two sides would release details in due course.
Tom Nichols, Christmas in Wartime- The Atlantic
Russians who know Putin told the Times that the Kremlin dictator is willing to take untold numbers of casualties rather than abandon this war. (His butcher’s bill, according to Pentagon estimates, has already surpassed 100,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded.) There will likely be another offensive in the east and perhaps another attempt to take Kyiv itself. There is not much we can do in the short term to alleviate the individual suffering of Ukrainian families, but the West must continue to help Ukraine defend itself. Indeed, it’s possible that this latest missile salvo was in response to America’s decision to send a Patriot anti-missile battery to Ukraine, showing yet again that no one makes a better case for aiding the fight against the Russians than Putin himself.
Stefania Battistini and her crew interviewed a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and his testimony on the Bucha occupation and crimes of genocide. Translation: Monique Camarra
Maloletka & Fidler, Ukraine’s Evgeny Maloletka: agency photographer of 2022- The Guardian
This is an incredible reportage. Please read through it.
In early 2022, the Ukrainian photojournalist Evgeny Maloletka was covering violence in Kazakhstan when his attention turned back home: there were several reports signalling that Russia was preparing an invasion.
He didn’t have to think twice: he knew he had to be back in his home country. By mid-January, he was already working on assignment for the Associated Press in the city of Kharkiv and the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine, where there was a growing tension among Russian proxies.
“When we did a story about Ukraine’s preparation for war and how the country prepares to repel the attack of Russia in case of anything, it looked unserious,” Maloletka says. “Both protests and preparations of little groups in Kharkiv didn’t cause any serious reaction, and people lived their regular lives – went to theatres, clubs – and all that was pretty casual and people said ‘there will be no war’ and we didn’t entirely believe it ourselves.”
Liam Hunt, ‘Nothing could break us’: In Kherson, Ukraine, life itself has become an act of protest- The Toronto Star
Kherson was the first regional capital to fall to the Russians, and its recapture on Nov. 11 was a massive milestone for Ukrainian nationalists. When I arrived in the city five days later, the wounds of occupation were so fresh that Kremlin-approved billboards still littered residential neighbourhoods and landmines blanketed quiet streetsides.
I spoke with local children near Kherson’s riverbank, where audible artillery and gunfire perforated our conversations.
Alya, 8, shook her head when I asked if she liked going to school under Russian occupation.
“In the Russian (school), I didn’t understand anything, so I liked the Ukrainian one more … now that Ukraine has returned, we’re waiting for the Ukrainian one to reopen.”
“We really want electricity and water,” she added. “I don’t know when they will turn it on … there’s so much hardship because there’s no water … I want to cook something to eat but there’s no water. But we stored a little bit so we have some for now.”
Quentin Sommerville, The making of a young Hero of Ukraine- BBC News
This is a war where Ukrainian fathers and sons serve on the same frontlines. And this was how it was for 22-year-old Eugene Gromadskyi - at least at the very beginning.
On the first day of the invasion, he stood shoulder to shoulder with his father Oleg on the outskirts of Kharkiv, as column after column of Russian men and armoured vehicles sought to capture their city.
In those crucial first hours he was in command of a unit, which, outnumbered and outgunned, attacked and destroyed Russian vehicle columns and captured prisoners. For this, Eugene would earn the country's highest military honour. His father would face a different fate.
Eugene has been in the thick of it for almost the entire war. He started out as a lieutenant in the National Guard, now he's a senior lieutenant in the army's 92nd Mechanized Brigade, which is named after Ivan Sirko, a 17th Century Cossack military leader. The intelligence platoon Eugene commands describe themselves as Sirko's Rowdy Boys - their motto is "Revenge for all". "They are my family," he tells me.
