Dhe authorities in the Crimean metropolis of Sevastopol reported again on Thursday that a Ukrainian drone had been shot down by the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The Ukrainian news portal “Krym.Realii‘ reported an explosion that could be heard in the center of the city. The city’s Russian-installed mayor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, announced the downing.
As the naval base of the Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol on the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 is strategically important to Moscow. Ukraine had repeatedly attacked the city from the air with combat drones and once from the sea with remote-controlled unmanned boats. Although there was no major damage, Russia has moved some of its ships to the port of Novorossiysk on the mainland.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Moscow still sees the danger of an attack on Crimea. However, the air defense shows that the countermeasures worked.
All developments in the live ticker:
2:13 p.m. – Russia ramps up attacks in eastern Ukraine
Russia is pushing ahead with its offensive in eastern Ukraine. The armed forces continued their air and ground attacks on several towns and villages on Thursday. Near the city of Lysychansk, Russia moved more troops to try to capture the village of Bilohorivka, the region’s Ukrainian governor said. A commander in another heavily contested settlement spoke of an increasingly intense Russian air offensive. The wave of attacks again caused power outages in Ukraine.
Source: Infographic WORLD
There are “constant attacks,” Luhansk governor Serhiy Hajdaj said on Ukrainian television about the Russian offensive. “They are bringing more and more reserves to the Bilohorivka area to try to take the village.” Nine civilians were killed in the attacks in the town of Bakhmut and other parts of Donetsk region, which borders Luhansk, the region’s governor said . Ukrainian forces responded by firing rocket launchers, according to Reuters eyewitnesses.
Fighting was ongoing along the entire so-called demarcation line in Donetsk. A spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration said the frontline town of Avdiivka was fired upon by Russian tanks in the morning. Reports from the war zone often cannot be checked independently.
12:21 PM – Kremlin does not announce annexation of more territories
According to the Kremlin, Russia is not currently planning to incorporate new territories in its war against Ukraine. “There is no talk of that,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. Rather, there is “a lot of work” to wrest the incorporated areas from Ukrainian control. Russia had annexed the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions under international protest from Ukraine and the West. No country recognizes this breach of international law. Most recently, Ukraine had freed parts of the regions from Russian occupation.
11:25 am – Ongoing power outages in Ukraine
Power outages continue in Ukraine following the latest wave of Russian attacks. According to the electricity company DTEK, there are emergency shutdowns in Kyiv and the surrounding area, in the Odessa region in the south of the country and in Dnipro in the interior of the country. The situation is made more difficult by the weather, says the network operator Ukrenergo. The power lines in the west of the country froze. “All regions lack energy – up to a third of what is needed,” says the governor of the Zaporizhia region, Olexander Starukh.
11:05 am – Russia laments lack of involvement in Nord Stream investigation
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow accuses Sweden and Denmark of refusing to involve the Russian authorities in the investigation into the holes in the two Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea. “Denmark and Sweden are afraid to involve Russia in the investigation because then the world would know who is responsible for the explosions,” says Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. European governments suspect that the cracks in the pipelines that transported gas directly from Russia to Germany were the result of sabotage.
9:55 a.m. – Scholz hopes to build up a missile defense shield in five years
Chancellor Olaf Scholz hopes that the envisaged European anti-missile defense system will be built up in the next five years. “The government is currently speaking to the manufacturers of the various systems in order to prepare the concrete decisions,” the SPD politician told the newspapers of the Funke media group and the French newspaper “Ouest-France”. 14 EU countries have expressed their interest in taking part. Germany will permanently spend two percent of its economic output on the Bundeswehr.
08:53 – Russian soldiers participate in exercise in Belarus
Russian soldiers take part in military exercises in Belarus. “Soldiers of the Western Military District continue intensive combat training at the firing ranges of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Belarus,” the Russian Defense Ministry reports.
Combat training takes place both during the day and at night. Videos released by the ministry show Russian soldiers training near tanks in a winter landscape, firing weapons including artillery.
In the past, Belarus had declared that it did not want to intervene in the war between Russia and Ukraine. However, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had ordered the movement of troops to the Ukrainian border.
7:30 a.m. – Scholz sees the danger of a nuclear escalation in the Ukraine war falling
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) sees the danger of a nuclear escalation in the Ukraine war falling. “Russia has stopped threatening to use nuclear weapons,” Scholz told the Funke media group (Thursday editions) and the French newspaper Ouest-France. This is a “response to the international community drawing a red line”.
When asked whether the danger of a nuclear escalation has been averted, Scholz said: “For the moment we have hammered in a peg against it.”
The Chancellor again called on Moscow to end the war immediately and withdraw troops from Ukraine. At the same time, he was willing to “talk to Russia about arms control in Europe”. This was offered to Moscow before the war – “and nothing has changed in this position”.
At the same time, Scholz defended the aid for Kyiv. “After the United States, Germany is one of the countries that supports Ukraine the most, including with weapons,” he said. The federal government always acts in close consultation with its allies. “By the way, no one has delivered Western-style main battle tanks,” added the Chancellor.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Moscow would use nuclear weapons in response to an attack. “We consider weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, as a means of defense,” said the Kremlin chief.
4:22 a.m. – Schwesig calls for relief for heating oil customers
Before the prime ministers’ conference on Thursday, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s head of government, Manuela Schwesig (SPD), is pushing for additional help for heating oil, pellet or briquette customers, as well as quick hardship rules for small and medium-sized companies. “So far we have not had a solution for consumers who heat with oil, pellets or briquettes, although their expenses have also risen sharply,” says Schwesig in an interview with the editorial network Germany (RND).
00:01 – Putin: Ukraine war can last “a long time”.
Roughly nine and a half months after the invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin is not ruling out a long war against the neighboring country. “Of course, it can be a long process,” Putin said at a meeting with representatives of a human rights council he set up. He also explained that half of the approximately 300,000 reservists drafted in the past few weeks are stationed in Ukraine.
10:55 p.m. – Ukraine: More than 1000 Russian attacks on our power grid
According to Ukrainian sources, Russia has attacked the Ukrainian power grid more than 1,000 times. “These attacks are the biggest blow to a power grid ever. More than 1,000 shells and rockets were fired at electrical equipment, lines and substations,” the Interfax Ukraine agency quoted the head of network operator Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytsky as saying. The energy infrastructure is still working despite considerable damage.
9:50 pm – Russian journalist sentenced to 22 years in prison – court rejects appeal
A court in Moscow has rejected a former journalist’s appeal and upheld his 22-year prison sentence for treason. Ivan Safronov was accused of leaking military secrets to Czech intelligence and a German. He has dismissed the allegations as absurd and said he had done nothing illegal.
Safronov worked as a military affairs reporter for the business newspaper Kommersant and later became an adviser to the head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos. At trial, he stated that as a journalist, he published information he had gathered from government agency and military industry sources. He never had access to secret documents.
Safronov was arrested in Moscow in July 2020. The trial against him was widely classified as politically motivated. His colleagues criticized the verdict as completely unfounded and called for his release. They suspected a possible act of revenge by the authorities because he had reported on incidents in the military and shady arms deals.
The EU has called on the Russian authorities to drop all charges against Safronov and release him unconditionally.
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