Long-range bombers at Russia’s Engels-2 airbase, 315 miles from the Ukraine border

Sunday’s Coverage: A Russian Mass Killing in Kherson City for Christmas

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 2057 GMT:

An underground Christmas concert for children in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv….

UPDATE 2043 GMT:

One of Russia’s wealthy legislators and a former critic of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Pavel Antov, has been found dead after a mysterious falling from a hotel in eastern India.

The multi-millionaire was on holiday in the Rayagada region to celebrate his upcoming 66th birthday.

Last Thursday, fellow legislator Vladimir Budanov, 61, reportedly died from a heart attack.

In June, Antov wrote in a blog that the Russian invasion and airstrikes on Kyiv were “terror”.

He was pressured to retract his statement, saying that the post was “an unfortunate misunderstanding” and a “technical error”. He claimed that he had “always supported the President” and “sincerely” backed the invasion.

UPDATE 1425 GMT:

In a sign of the rivalry within Russia’s defense establishment, Wagner Group mercenaries have posted a video message calling the Russian military’s top commander a “piece of shit”.

The fighters, in the frontline in eastern Ukraine near the city of Bakhmut, addressed Gen. Valery Gerasimov, “You are a piece of shit. Where are the shells? We have no shells anymore here.”

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner Group, did not reject the comments. He only said he had “nothing to say about this video”.

Russian troops have tried since May to overrun Bakhmut — even though the city’s strategic importance diminished after Ukraine’s successful counter-offensive in the east — taking heavy casualties.

UPDATE 1224 GMT:

Ukraine State energy provider Ukrenergo, says it has introduced emergency shutdowns in multiple regions and the capital Kyiv because of excessive energy consumption.

Currently, due to exceeding consumption limits, emergency shutdowns have been introduced in the Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Kyiv regions, and in the city of Kyiv.

Ukrenergo said repair work is ongoing at generating facilities after nine waves of Russian missile and drone strikes, “Due to the scale and complexity of the damage, restoring the equipment and functioning of a number of key facilities requires considerable time .”

UPDATE 1214 GMT:

Ukraine’s military has implicitly accepted responsibility for this morning’s drone strike on the Engels-2 airbase inside Russia.

Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said the explosion on the base, killing three troops, is “the consequence of Russian aggression”: “If the Russians thought that the war would not affect them deep in the rear, they were wrong.

UPDATE 0810 GMT:

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says Ukraine will call for Russia to be removed as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Kuleba said on national TV late Sunday, “We have a very simple question: Does Russia have the right to remain a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to be in the United Nations at all? We have a convincing and reasoned answer – no, it does not.”

UPDATE 0753 GMT:

Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times profiles the resistance network in Kherson city in southern Ukraine that defied — and counter-attacked — Russian invaders.

Guided by contacts in the Ukrainian security services, an assembly of ordinary citizens formed themselves into a grass-roots resistance movement. In dozens of interviews, residents and Ukrainian officials described how retirees like [fisherman Valentyn] Yermolenko — along with students, mechanics, grandmothers, and even a wealthy couple who were fixing up their yacht and got trapped in the city for the better part of a year — became spirited partisans for the Kherson underground. It was like something out of a spy movie.

They took clandestine videos of Russian troops and sent them to Ukrainian forces along with map coordinates. They used code names and passwords to circulate guns and explosives right under the Russians’ noses. Some even formed small attack teams that picked off Russian soldiers at night, making the fear and paranoia that settled over the city two-sided.

When the Russian Army hastily pulled out in mid-November, perhaps the biggest embarrassment so far to Mr. Putin’s war effort, Kherson became a powerful symbol. To allies questioning Ukraine’s resolve, and to Ukrainians themselves who had suffered so much misery and death and needed a glimmer of hope, Kherson showed what was possible.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: An airbase deep inside Russia has reportedly been struck again by a Ukrainian drone.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that three troops on the Engels-2 base, in the Saratove region 315 miles from the border, were killed early Monday.

The RBC-Ukraine news agency said two explosions were reported. The Russian outlet, citing local residents, said air raid sirens were sounding the alarm as an explosion was heard.

The Ministry declared that the drone had been shot down, with the three soldiers slain by falling wreckage, and that there was no damage to warplanes.

Hours earlier, the Ministry had proclaimed that Russian troops were working “round-the-clock” at new anti-aircraft missile system positions to defend against Ukrainian strikes. It said crews of the S-300V long-range surface-to-air missile systems were “mastering new position areas”.

Striking the Airbases

On December 5, the Engels-2 base — the home of Russia’s long-range squadrons with more than 30 heavy bombers on its runways — and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region, about 285 miles from the border, were struck. Both bases host Tu-95 and Tu-22M long-range bombers, used for waves of cruise missile attacks on Ukraine.

The folowing day, the oil installation near an airbase in the Kursk region was set ablaze.

Acknowledging the deaths of three troops, wounding of four, and damage to two warplanes, the Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine carried out the operations with modified Soviet-era Strizh warplanes.

Ukraine did not officially claim responsibility. However, a “senior Ukrainian official” told journalists, “The drones were launched from Ukrainian territory, and at least one of the strikes was made with the help of special forces close to the base who helped guide the drones to the target.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US “neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia”. However, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington would not prevent Ukraine’s military from carrying out the long-range operations.

National security spokesman John Kirby amplified:

Unlike the Russians, we respect Ukrainian sovereignty….In the end these are Ukrainian decisions that they have to make….

When we give them a weapons system, it belongs to them. Where they use it, how they use it, how much ammunition they use to use that system, those are Ukrainian decisions, and we respect that.