Car lights near Maidan Square during a blackout after Russian missile strikes, Kyiv, Ukraine, December 17, 2022 (Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP)

Wednesday’s Coverage: Zelenskiy — The “Crucial Year” Ahead

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1747 GMT:

The toll from today’s Russian attacks has been updated to two killed and seven injured.

Both fatalities were in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine.

UPDATE 1446 GMT:

Ukraine emergency services spokesperson Oleksandr Khorunzhy says five people were injured by this morning’s Russian attacks.

Ten regions were hit as a result, 28 objects were damaged. Eighteen of them are private residential buildings, the rest are objects of critical infrastructure. As a result of the shelling, three men, one woman, and one child were injured.

UPDATE 1339 GMT:

The Belarus Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed a Ukrainian anti-aircraft S-300 missile in the Brest border region at around 10 a.m.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine’s ambassador after the incident.

However, the military commissar of the Brest region, Oleg Konovalov, appeared to play down any prospect of retaliation, “No cause for worry, unfortunately these things happen.”

UPDATE 1116 GMT:

The Ukraine Air Force says it downed 54 of 69 Russian cruise missiles launched this morning from Russia’s Rostov region and from the Caspian and Black Seas.

It also said 11 Iranian-made Shahed “kamikaze” drones were destroyed overnight.

UPDATE 1109 GMT:

There are emergency power cuts in Lviv in western Ukraine because of damage to energy infrastructure from this morning’s Russian missile strikes.

While 70% of missiles were downed, some reached their targets. There is no information about victims yet.

Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said, “Energy companies have already started repair work and should restore power supply in the regional centre by the end of the day.”

Ukraine Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said there was also damage to infrastructure in Kyiv, north central Ukraine, and Odesa in the south.

UPDATE 1100 GMT:

In their latest attack on recently-liberated Kherson, Russian forces hit a medical facility, injuring two people.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Presidential office, posted:

Medical facilities are under fire almost every day. The other day it was a maternity hospital. Today, as a result of Russian shelling of the city, the regional cardiology dispensary was damaged.

Two people were injured – a security guard and an employee of the boiler house. The roof, windows and facade of one of the buildings were destroyed in the building.

UPDATE 0953 GMT:

The Washington Post has reconstructed Ukraine’s liberation of territory in the Kharkiv region in the northeast and the Kherson region in the south this autumn, drawing from interviews with more than 35 people, including Ukrainian commanders, officials in Kyiv, combat troops, and senior US and European military and political officials.

What emerges is a story of how deepening cooperation with NATO powers, especially the United States, enabled Ukrainian forces — backed with weapons, intelligence and advice — to seize the initiative on the battlefield, expose Putin’s annexation claims as a fantasy, and build faith at home and abroad that Russia could be defeated.

“Our relationship with all of our partners changed immediately,” said Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, who commanded the Kharkiv offensive. “That is, they saw that we could achieve victory — and the help they were providing was being used with effect.”

Syrsky assessed in the summer that both the geography and the positioning of Russian forces, with a thin defense in some areas of Kharkiv, favored a single, rapid counter-offensive.

Russia had gathered about 18,000 troops in 24 battalion tactical groups in the city of Izyum and surrounding towns, as well as stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. But as Ukraine carried out diversionary operations in the south, Russia redeployed its most experienced forces and the battalions in Izyum were halved.

Ukrainian forces were short on munitions, but US intelligence helped ration the ammunition through accurate targeting. While Russian commanders on the ground eventually realized that a counter-offensive was imminent, Syrsky says Moscow’s cumbersome bureaucracy meant the information “didn’t reach anyone or it wasn’t taken into account”.

On September 6, the Ukrainians broke through the Russian frontlines. The original plan was to take up a position up a position north of Izyum by Day 7. However, a Ukrainian commander said, “Half the units in Izyum, maybe even the majority, are simply fleeing. So, we’re entering Izyum.”

Syrsky says, “We expected that we would fulfill all the missions of the operation. But that there would be this kind of cascading collapse — I didn’t expect that.”

In the south, Ukrainian commanders initially considered a broad counter-offensive. However, the US military advised them to concentrate on Kherson city and the surrounding area west of the Dnipro River.

The Russians put up a much stiffer resistance than in Kharkiv, holding up the Ukrainian forces. But in early November, a new commander, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky — a deputy of Syrsky’s in the Kharkiv advance — oversaw operations to surround the Russians and blow up bridges and supply lines.

The Russians retreated across the Dnipro, and Kherson city was liberated on November 9. Days later, amid enthusiastic crowds, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy raised the Ukrainian flag and hailed the “beginning of the end of the war”.

UPDATE 0908 GMT:

The all clear has been sounded in Kyiv.

Mayor Vitaly Klitschko says 16 Russian missiles were downed. About 40% of the capital is without electricity as part of “necessary safety measures”, but heating and water is unaffected.

Air Force Command spokesman Yuriy Ignat estimated that 100 missiles were launched from 13 Russian warplanes and two warships.

UPDATE 0859 GMT:

Monuments to Russia’s Catherine the Great and military commander Alexander Suvorov were taken down in Odesa in southern Ukraine on Thursday night.

The Russian empress claimed the foundation of Odesa in 1794. Suvorov was one of her generals pursuing the expansion of Russia.

In September, Catherine’s statue was doused in red paint. Two months later, a red executioner’s cap was put on her head and a noose in her right hand.

After a vote by residents, the Odesa city council confirmed the decision for removal of her monument on November 30. The statues will be stored in the Odesa National Art Museum.

UPDATE 0848 GMT:

Trying to shut down dissent and criticism of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, Russian security services have carried out raids in seven cities.

State outlet TASS wrote that the raid targeted “administrators of a number of telegram channels and former municipal deputies of Moscow”. They included participants in the “Congress of People’s Deputies” in Poland in early November, as well as candidates on the “Nomination” platform in September’s Moscow elections.

Other raids were linked to the case of Ilya Ponomarev, arrested in absentia on August 30 on the charge of “fake news” about the Russian military. Days later, several journalists and administrators of Telegram and YouTube channels were targeted in searches.

On Thursday, security personnel searched the homes of Moscow municipal deputies Sergei Tsukasov, Vladimir Zalishchak, and Mikhail Lobanov and journalist Artur Galiev. Nikita Kiforuk, the editor-in-chief of the 86.ru website, was detained and all his equipment seized.

UPDATE 0807 GMT:

Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko reports that two people have been rescued from a damaged house after Russian missile attacks. Debris also damaged a car.

Three people, including a 14-year-old girl, have been injured.

Kyiv Governor Oleksiy Kuleba posted on Telegram, “The air alert continues. Air defense is working. We do not relax. Let’s be vigilant. Russia will not intimidate us.”

Odesa Governor Maksym Marchenko posted on Telegram:

Air defense units shot down 21 missiles over the region!!! Fragments of one of the enemy rockets fell into a residential building, fortunately there were no casualties.

Unfortunately, as a result of the hits, there is damage to the energy infrastructure, which is why there are emergency power outages in the region. All services are on the ground and working.

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy says 90% of the city is without electricity as protection against any damage to energy infrastructure. He said water supply might be interrupted.

UPDATE 0755 GMT:

As Russia launched its missile barrage this morning, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected any discussion of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s 10-point peace formula.

Lavrov insisted that Ukraine’s liberation of the Russian-occupied east of the country and Crimea in the south is “an illusion”.

At her morning press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wished everyone “warmth, hope, faith, resilience and light”: “We do not know what the future year holds for us, but I believe we can make it filled with light…and fulfil our duties for each other.”

She then echoed Lavrov’s rejection of talks: “We can’t talk about the serious peace initiative of Kyiv and its western sponsors as [they] don’t have anything serious about them.”

UPDATE 0755 GMT:

The debris of downed Russian missiles has damaged two detached homes, an industrial enterprise, and a children’s playground in Kyiv.

UPDATE 0738 GMT:

Ukraine Presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak tweets that Russia’s missile barrage is its largest to date.

UPDATE 0724 GMT:

The US-based Institute for the Study of War assesses that Russia is failing in its seven-month attempt to overrun the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow’s forces launched the assault in May. They continued after the city lost its strategic significance amid a Ukrainian counter-offensive that liberated the neighboring Kharkiv region and part of Donetsk in September.

Ukraine officials say most of Bakhmut has been levelled. The city, with a pre-war population of about 70,000, now has 12,000 residents.

But the ISW lists a series of indicators that Russia is at the “point at which a force no longer has the capability to continue its form of operations, offense or defense”.

Senior Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and head of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov, have recently visited the frontline in Bakhmut. Russian forces are operating in squad-sized assault groups due to combat lossesm, with combat footage showing Ukrainian fire repelling squad-sized groups of 5 to 10 unsupported Russian infantry attempting disorderedly assaults near the city. Wagner Group mercenaries, who were reportedly leading the assault, have “likely become degraded to a near-debilitating extent and need reinforcement from more conventional Russian elements”.

UPDATE 0710 GMT:

Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko has confirmed “several explosions in the capital”. Ihor Terekhov, mayor of Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, posted on Telegram about “a series of explosions in the city”: “What objects were hit and whether there were victims – the information is still being specified.”

Power has been cut off in the Dnipropetrovsk region in south-central Ukraine. State energy provider DTEK said outages in Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk will be implemented “due to the threat of missile attacks, in order to avoid significant damage if the enemy manages to hit energy facilities”.

Vitaly Kim, the Governor of the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, posted on Telegram, “We shot down 3 missiles over the sea” and “Another minus 2. Handsome.”

A missile was also downed over the Sumy region in northern Ukraine.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Hoping to break energy infrastructure and stave off defeat on the battlefield, Russia has launched its latest missile barrage across Ukraine.

The first explosion was heard just after 8:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) in the capital Kyiv, as Ukraine Presidential advisor said more than 100 Russian missiles were incoming.

Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih in south-central Ukraine, said the missiles were fired from Russian warships in the Black Sea. Just before air raid sirens sounded, Ukraine’s Southern Command reported that Russia had deployed two surface and submarine missile carriers, each with at least 20 Kalibar missiles, on combat duty.

The Kyiv administration posted on Telegram: “Air defense works! Keep calm! Stay in shelters until the air alarm [is] off!”

The barrage is the first since Russia fired 76 missiles on December 16. An assault with more than 100 would be close to the largest attack in Moscow’s waves of attacks since October 10.

The effectiveness of the strikes has been diminishing, with Russia firing fewer missiles and Iranian-made drones and Ukrainian air defense downing most of them. More than 60 missiles were downed in the December 16 assault, and 30 of 35 Iranian drones were intercepted days later.

Still, those missiles and drones which get through have caused significant damage to energy infrastructure, with half of Ukraine’s electricity grid down at one point. Several regions and Kyiv are still on emergency and scheduled blackouts after the attack two weeks ago.