WAR IN UKRAINE: January 5, 2023
Workers remove debris of a destroyed building purported to be a vocational college used as temporary accommodation for Russian soldiers in Makiivka in Russian-controlled Ukraine, on January 4. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 316
Russian President Vladimir Putin has dispatched one of his country’s most modern warships armed with advanced hypersonic missiles on a long voyage through the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and into the Indian Ocean, Russian state media reported Wednesday. The frigate Admiral Gorshkov set off from an unnamed northern Russian port on Wednesday after Putin spoke with the ship’s commander and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu via video link, according to a report from the TASS news agency. Putin boasted that the ship was carrying Zircon hypersonic missiles, long-range weapons that travel more than five times the speed of sound and are harder to detect and intercept. “It has no analogues in any country in the world,” Putin said, according to TASS. “I am sure that such powerful weapons will reliably protect Russia from potential external threats and will help ensure the national interests of our country,” he added - CNN
There are signs that Russia is preparing an escalation of the war in Ukraine in February, the secretary of Ukraine's Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said on January 4, a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Russia was planning to call up more troops for a major new offensive - RFE/RL
More than 60% of Bakhmut is now destroyed as Russian forces attempt an advance on the city in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, a Ukrainian official said. "Whatever attempts to enter the city the enemy makes, it fails to advance. Whatever advances they had, they have been pushed back to their previous positions, outside the city limits," he told Ukrainian television. "In fact, they are now in the flat devastated area, which also contributes to their huge personnel losses."
The founder and sponsor of the PMC Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin said that the first group of prisoners who were recruited to participate in the war against Ukraine had their criminal records expunged, reports Russian propagandist media RIA Novosti, which published a video of convicts. According to "Putin's chef" Prigozhin, this is the first group of prisoners who participated in the war as mercenaries of the Wagner Group. They have completed their six-month contract, so now their criminal record has been cleared - Hromadske Intl.
Parts made by more than a dozen US and Western companies were found inside a single Iranian drone downed in Ukraine last fall, according to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment obtained exclusively by CNN. The assessment, which was shared with US government officials late last year, illustrates the extent of the problem facing the Biden administration, which has vowed to shut down Iran’s production of drones that Russia is launching by the hundreds into Ukraine. Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment. The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment - CNN
Meanwhile, Russian servicemen Sergey Sozinov, Gleb Pivkin, Russian Air Force captain Andrey Stepovoy and Russian Air Force lieutenant Evgeny Glukhov are allegedly responsible for manning some of the Iranian-made kamikaze drones launched to attack Ukraine, according to a joint investigation by Slisdvo.Info and Nashi Groshi Lviv - Kyiv Independent
French President Emmanuel Macron told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that France would send light AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles to help Kyiv in its war against Russia. Meanwhile, Germany is looking for further ways to help Ukraine protect its people and infrastructure, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
Required reading…
As Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine grinds into its second winter, with scant hope for a quick conclusion, Ukraine has shocked the world by beating back a bigger, badder bully. But Ukraine’s victories have been won not only with guns, tanks and uniformed troops. Ordinary Ukrainians — paramedics, couriers, train conductors, the folks in hard hats who tend the overhead electrical lines — have proven to be the unshakable backbone of an underdog country that wasn’t supposed to endure past the last winter. One day the history books will attest to their courage, their resolve, their heroism. Here’s a first draft of those future accounts.
Read more in this Fortune Magazine article here