Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Ukrainian officials said the country came under attack from Russian drones and missiles overnight, with a number of people, including a baby, hurt in strikes on the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said 10 people were hurt in overnight Russian missile attacks on three areas of Donetsk, a region which is occupied in large part by Russian forces.

“Pokrovsk, Novogrodivka and Myrnograd came under fire. As a result of shelling, 10 people were injured, including 4 children. Five more people are being searched for under the rubble,” Klymenko said on Telegram.

In one strike, a family with two children were among the injured in one of the attacks, he said.

“Among the victims is a family with two children: a 16-year-old boy and a 6-month-old baby. A 13-year-old boy was also injured. An apartment building and 9 private buildings, a police station, cars, and garages were previously damaged.”

Klymenko said a police paramedic helped a man with an injured baby to get out from under the rubble of a building. The baby was not in a life-threatening condition, he said.

Fighting is intense in Donetsk as Ukraine and Russian forces battle over key towns in the region, such as Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed Wednesday that Russian forces captured Khromove, on the western outskirts of Bakhmut, although this has not been confirmed.

Ukraine’s air force said Thursday that 14 out of 20 Iranian-made Shahed drones were destroyed overnight with anti-aircraft defenses in action in the southern, eastern and central regions of Ukraine.

— Holly Ellyatt

Member countries are divided over the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s annual foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday with Baltic nations and Ukraine refusing to attend over the presence of Russia’s Sergei Lavrov.

The 57-member OSCE is the successor to a Cold War-era organisation for Soviet and Western powers to engage but is now largely paralysed by Russia’s ongoing use of the effective veto each country has.

The U.S. and its allies are seeking simultaneously to keep the OSCE alive and hold Russia to account for its invasion of Ukraine. They are attending while making a point of denouncing Moscow’s actions – a stance that some of Ukraine’s closest allies have little truck with.

“How can you talk with an aggressor who is committing genocide, full aggression against another member state, Ukraine?” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told reporters on Wednesday in Brussels where he attended a NATO meeting.

Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are siding with Ukraine on the issue. Russia’s Tass news agency reported Lavrov arrived in Skopje on Wednesday after a circuitous five-hour flight that avoided the airspace of countries that have barred Russian aircraft.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said he understood unease about Lavrov attending the meeting in Skopje, North Macedonia. But he said it was a chance for Lavrov to hear broad condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Your decision to allow Lavrov to participate is in line with our common objective to keep multilateralism alive,” Borrell told North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski at a joint press conference in Skopje.

“Lavrov needs to hear again, from everyone, why Russia is being condemned and isolated,” Borrell said. “Then he will be able to come back to the Kremlin and report to the Kremlin master.

Estonia had been due to take over the annually rotating OSCE chairmanship but Russia blocked it for months. A last-minute deal for neutral Malta to take over the chairmanship must be formally approved at the meeting on Thursday and Friday.

— Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that support for Ukraine was strong and would continue, as NATO foreign ministers met Ukrainian officials in Brussels to discuss the war on Wednesday.

“I have to tell you, listening to all of our colleagues around the table, every single one expressed strong enduring support for Ukraine,” he told reporters.

“Some are questioning whether the United States and other NATO allies should continue to stand with Ukraine as we enter the second winter of Putin’s brutality. But the answer here today at NATO is clear, and it’s unwavering: We must and we will continue to support Ukraine.” 

Questions have been raised about the longevity of U.S. support for Ukraine given the forthcoming 2024 election and rumblings of discontent among some Republicans about continued military assistance.

Blinken insisted Wednesday that “the United States is not standing alone.”

“So we often talk about burden sharing and the imperative of burden sharing when it comes to Ukraine. That’s clearly what we’ve seen and what we continue to see.” 

— Holly Ellyatt

A Russian court has ordered a man to be jailed for 10 days after he used his finger to write “No to War” on a snow-covered turnstile at the entrance to an ice-skating rink at Moscow’s Gorky Park.

According to court papers, the incident happened on Nov. 23 and the man, named as Dmitry Fyodorov, was sentenced the following day after being detained by the police.

Police decided his actions could amount to a civil offence under a law which targets anyone deemed to have acted publicly to discredit Russia’s armed forces, a crime which in his case was punishable by a fine.

New laws cracking down on dissent were brought in soon after President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022 in what he called a “special military operation.”

For those opposed to Russia’s war in Ukraine, speaking out in public has since become a risky thing to do and critics say nearly 20,000 people have been detained and over 800 criminal cases opened.

Fyodorov, who admitted in court that he’d written the anti-war slogan, was handed ten days in jail for disobeying the police and allegedly refusing to go to a police station, something he denied according to the court papers.

He was also fined an unknown sum —  apparently for writing “No to War” — according to Russian media reports, though there was no mention of that in court papers posted online.

The authorities say maximum unity is needed at a time when Russia is locked in what Putin —  who is expected to seek another six-year term in office next year —  has described as an existential battle with the West. Critics accuse the authorities of brutally shutting down and punishing any dissenting voices.

— Reuters

Russia’s defense ministry claimed Wednesday that its forces had taken control of a village on the outskirts of the wartorn town of Bakhmut in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

The ministry said units of its southern group of forces had “liberated” the village of Artemovskoye (called Khromove in Ukrainian) in what Russia calls the Donetsk People’s Republic, a self-proclaimed republic and pro-Russian separatist region.

“Units of the Southern Group of Forces, with the support of aviation and artillery fire, improved the situation along the front line and liberated the village of Artemovskoye,” the ministry said, according to comments reported by the TASS news agency.

The village had a pre-war population of 1,000 people, Reuters noted, and lies just east of Bakhmut, a town captured by Russian forces earlier this year after months of fighting that left the town largely destroyed.

CNBC could not verify the defense ministry’s claim and Ukraine is yet to comment.

— Holly Ellyatt

The Kremlin slammed Finland’s decision to close all of its border crossing points with Russia, saying the decision was unjustified.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that the decision to close the last open border crossing until Dec.13 was excessive.

“Finland is not threatened by anyone or anything, and in this case this is, of course, an absolutely redundant measure to ensure border security, because there is no threat there and in reality there is no tension,” the Kremlin spokesman told reporters, according to Google-translated comments carried by state news agency Tass.

Finland made the decision to close its border Tuesday, after repeatedly accusing Russia of purposefully sending undocumented migrants through crossing points in a bid to create instability in Finland. Helsinki sees the “hybrid attack operation,” as it has described it, as retaliation for its joining NATO earlier this year.

Russia denies “weaponizing” migration — an accusation made by Finland and other countries, including Estonia and Latvia.

There have been media reports Wednesday that Poland plans to send troops to Finland’s border with Russia in an effort to shore up security there. Asked about those reports, Peskov said that this would represent a “completely unprovoked, unjustified concentration of armed units on the Russian border.”

He added that “tension may arise as a result of the concentration of additional units on the border.” 

“The Finns must be clearly aware that this will pose a threat to us by increasing the concentration of military units on our borders,” Peskov warned.

— Holly Ellyatt