Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

Russia possesses and will implement “options to circumvent EU sanctions on diamonds,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, in Google-translated comments carried by Russian state news agency Tass on Telegram.

On Monday, the EU agreed its 12th package of sanctions against Moscow for its war in Ukraine, imposing a ban on the direct or indirect import, purchase or transfer of diamonds that originate in Russia, are exported by the country or transit the nation. The prohibition applies to both natural and synthetic diamonds, alongside diamond jewelry.

An indirect import ban on Russian diamonds processed in third countries will be phased in between March 1 and Sep. 1 next year.

— Ruxandra Iordache

A total of 105 combat engagements took place between Ukrainian and Russian forces over the past day, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook update.

The clashes included one rocket and six aerial strikes, as well as 62 instances of shelling, all carried out by Russia, the update said.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that civilians were killed and injured as part of the violence without supplying tallies, while adding that private residential infrastructure also sustained damage.

More than 140 settlements in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts came under artillery fire, the update added.

CNBC could not independently verify developments on the ground.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military alliance of post-Soviet states, announced its plans to carry out seven joint drills in 2024, its Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov told Russian state outlet Tass.

The military bloc is made up of six ex-Soviet countries: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia.

Similar to NATO’s Article 5, which stipulates that an attack on one member signifies an attack on all, Article 4 of the CSTO’s Collective Security Treaty affirms that an act of aggression against one member is seen as an attack on all members. CTSO signatories are not allowed to join other military alliances.

— Natasha Turak

Ukraine’s top general, Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview with local press while speaking about his country’s military recruiting abilities. 

Zelenskyy fired all of Ukraine’s military recruitment heads in an anti-corruption crackdown in August. When asked if this had affected recruiting, Gen. Zaluzhnyi lamented the move, saying:

“They were professionals, they knew how to do it, but they are gone.”

As for the country’s new recruiting strategy, he said, “It’s still a little early to evaluate recruiting, and as for the issues of mobilization, it’s not just that it needs to be strengthened, but returned … to the framework that worked before.”

Reports on the ongoing heavy fighting in Ukraine’s east describe exhausted soldiers being injured and killed at high rates and military commanders struggling to find replacements for them.

— Natasha Turak

The Biden administration has enough previously authorized funding for just one more military aid package to Kyiv for 2023 before it has to get Congressional approval for new packages, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told press Monday evening.

“We have… one more aid package here before our replenishment authority dries up,” Kirby said. The replenishment system is how the Department of Defense replaces the weapons it donates to Ukraine and must be approved by Congress.

That approval is proving more and more difficult to come by as many hardline Republicans refuse to approve new funding, angry at what they say is Biden putting Ukraine ahead of domestic issues like border security.

— Natasha Turak

Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted documents to the country’s Central Election Commission to register his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.

“He submitted them,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said of Putin and the documents, confirming the news to Russian state media. The president was nominated by a group of prominent members of the ruling United Russia party as well as famous actors, athletes and other Russian celebrities.

Putin has been either prime minister or president of Russia continuously since 1999, and is Russia’s longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin. He is widely expected to win the election as he faces no significant competition and his government has jailed his most serious political rivals, opposition politicians Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin.

Putin consistently saw landslide wins in previous elections, but independent observers say the votes were neither free nor far and were rife with fraud.

— Natasha Turak

A new report found that Russian bombings have destroyed nearly every building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka.

The Centre for Information Resilience, an independent non-profit group that exposes and tracks human rights abuses and war crimes, detailed in its report the extent to which civilian infrastructure across the city has been flattened. Russian strikes have hit 17 of Avdiivka’s educational institutions, nine of its 11 medical clinics, all five of its churches and its three major supermarkets, as well as extensive strikes on residential tower blocks.

“Avdiivka has been a central battleground in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” Belen Carrasco Rodriguez, who spearheaded the project, wrote in the report.

“The bombardment of the city has been relentless – almost no building in the city centre has been left unscathed, with nearly all critical civilian infrastructure like schools, hospitals and supermarkets largely destroyed or damaged.”

— Natasha Turak