Journalists surrounding victims of atrocities in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv occupied by Russian forces from March 4 to 31, 2022 (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

Tuesday’s Coverage: Zelenskiy — “Russia Interested in Fomenting War in Middle East”

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1700 GMT:

At least four civilians have been killed by a Russian missile strike on a school in the town of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine.

Two people were injured and one rescued from the rubble of the badly-damaged school.

Governor Serhiy Lysak said 50 private homes and two infrastructure facilities were also damaged.

UPDATE 1238 GMT:

Meeting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Brussels, Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has announced a €1.7 billion ($1.8 billion) fund for Ukrainian recovery.

The initiative will be financed from tax on frozen Russian assets.

De Croo also confirmed that Belgium will send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine from 2025.

UPDATE 1134 GMT:

Standing alongside Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the NATO Defense Ministers meeting in Brussels, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has announced another $200 million in military aid for Kyiv.

The package includes air defense munitions, artillery and rocket ammunition, and anti-tank weapons.

Zelenskiy posted his gratitude:

UPDATE 1003 GMT:

Estonia’s Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said Sunday’s damage to the Baltic Connector subsea gas pipeline with Finland was caused by “quite heavy force”.

Investigators and “Finnish Government sources” said on Tuesday that the pipeline may have been sabotaged, and a communications cable between the two countries was also damaged.

The Russian survey vessel Sibiryakov was observed conducting “underwater activities” in the area in June, August, and September.

Estonia’s Pevkur told Reuters, “It can clearly be seen that these damages are caused by quite heavy force. So what it is exactly, we have to specify yet, but at the moment it rather seems that it had been mechanical impact or mechanical destruction.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who is at a NATO Defense Ministers meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, said that if the damage was proven to be due to an attack, it would be met by a “united and determined” response.

Baltic Connector’s operators Gasgrid Finland and Elering of Estonia said repairs will take at least five months, and a restart of the gas flow will not happen before April 2024.

UPDATE 0849 GMT:

Ukraine’s State security service SBU has accused two Ukrainian brothers of providing the information for Russia’s deadly missile attack on Hroza in northeast Ukraine last Thursday.

The strike on a cafe and food shop killed 55 civilians gathered at a memorial service for a soldier being reburied in the village.

The SBU said two residents — Vladimir Mamon, 30, and Dmitry Mamon, 23 — began working for the Russian military during Moscow’s occupation of the Kharkiv region in the early days of the February 2022 invasion.

After Ukraine’s liberation of the area in autumn 2022, the brothers “remotely formed their own network of informants in the territory controlled by Ukraine”, said the SBU.

This included collection of information about the planned reburial in Hroza: “They understood that as a result of an enemy attack, civilians would certainly die.” Vladimir Mamon handed over the exact address and time of the funeral to the Russian military.

Both men are accused of high treason, and Vladimir Mamon is charged with violating the laws and customs of war.

UPDATE 0644 GMT:

European countries have committed another £100 million ($123 million) in military support through the UK-administered International Fund for Ukraine.

The funds will provide equipment for crossing of minefields, bridging of rivers and trenches, and for supply of heavy duty plant vehicles to destroy Russian non-explosive obstacles.

Final contracts have been signed from a previously-announced IFU package of more than £70 million ($86 million) of air defense capabilities.

UPDATE 0635 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is in Brussels, Belgium for a meeting of NATO Defense Ministers.

Zelenskiy will attend the first meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council and sit down with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg posted:

On Tuesday, Zelenskiy was in Bucharest, conferring with Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis about air defense and protection of shipping in the Black Sea and on the Danube River.

Romania also agreed to provide training for Ukrainian pilots on US-made F-16 fighter jets.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: With its leader and troops accused of war crimes, Russia has failed in its bid to rejoin the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council.

Russia only received 83 votes in the 193-member General Assembly on Tuesday, while Bulgaria had 160 and Albania 123.

Moscow’s membership on the Council was revoked in April 2022, weeks after the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and amid emerging evidence of the mass killing of Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces.

As revelations continued about the war crimes in the north of the country, the Russians killed tens of thousands of civilians in the assault and siege of Mariupol in the southeast. Ukrainians, including tens of thousands of children, were deported to Russia or Russian-occupied territory.

In March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Russian “Children’s Rights” commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova over the deportations.

Wednesday’s vote came less than a week after a Russian missile strike killed 52 civilians — 1/6 of the village’s population — at a memorial service in Hroza in northeast Ukraine.

See also Ukraine War, Day 590: Russia’s Mass Killing at A Memorial Service

Albania’s UN Ambassador Ferit Hoxha said the General Assembly had “an important choice” to “demonstrate that it is not ready to take an arsonist for a firefighter”.

Hoxha urged those who care about human rights and “the credibility of the Human Rights Council and its work” to stand against a Russian leadership which kills innocent people, destroys civilian infrastructure, ports, and grain silos, “and then takes pride in doing so”.

Louis Charbonneau of Human Rights Watch commented, “UN member states sent a strong signal to Russia’s leadership that a government responsible for countless war crimes and crimes against humanity doesn’t belong on the Human Rights Council.”

Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Maria Zabolotskaya, protested that “the United States campaigned for Albania” in an “unprecedented…campaign directly aimed against us”.