Summary
We are now closing the live blog.
Here is a summary of events so far:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has spoken of putting together “new bilateral agreements” that will “reanimate” the system of international law. He added that new military packages will be delivered “ in the coming weeks and months”.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has reported that Ukraine maintains a presence on the left bank of the Dnipro River and has continued to repel Russian attacks despite “logistical concerns”.
Russian lawmakers have prepared a bill allowing for the confiscation of money and property from people who spread “deliberately false information” about the country’s armed forces, a senior member of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin said on Saturday, Reuters has reported.
Russia has lost 375,270 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Saturday. This number includes 750 casualties over the past day.
Russian troops have reinstalled mines along the perimeter of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in the occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast, the Euromaidan Press website has reported, citing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The wife of a Russian soldier delivered an emotional appeal for his return from Ukraine on Saturday at the election headquarters of President Vladimir Putin – it was a defiant gesture by Maria Andreyeva in a country where open criticism of the war is banned.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has referenced a quote from Winston Churchill in an interview with Le Figaro. Discussing the war in Ukraine, he said: “Give us the tools and we will finish the job.”
Romanian protesters have ended their blockade at the Porubne-Siret crossing along the Romanian-Ukrainian border the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the border guard service.
Russian forces launched seven Shahed-136/131 attack drones against Ukraine overnight, four of which were shot down by Ukraine’s air defence, according to a morning update from the general staff.
Russia has accused Ukraine of being behind a drone strike that sparked a huge inferno at an oil depot in western Russia on Friday, the latest in a series of escalating cross-border attacks. Russian officials and news reports said four oil reservoirs with a total capacity of 6,000 cubic metres (1.6m gallons) were set on fire at the oil refinery after the drone reached Klintsy, a city of 70,000 people located about 60km (40 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has spoken of putting together “new bilateral agreements” that will “reanimate” the system of international law.
He added that new military packages will be delivered “ in the coming weeks and months”.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he wrote:
Next week will see more international work, including those with our EU partners. We will increase activity. This is also true for security commitments from partners. We are putting together new, strong bilateral agreements. January and February must produce more results in this area. We can already see specific dates when such new and powerful documents may be signed.
I am grateful to our entire team that participates in the relevant negotiations, as well as all leaders and nations that are prepared to take truly ambitious steps. By developing such a new security commitment architecture, we are effectively reanimating the system of international law. And when justice and security are restored in Ukraine, this will also work for the rest of the world.
We are also working with key partners on specific military aid packages that will be delivered right now, in the coming weeks and months. I thank all of Ukraine’s friends around the world who understand that the battlefield cannot simply wait and that life-saving efforts cannot be postponed, as well as those who work to expedite decisions that are needed right now.
Next week will see more international work, including those with our EU partners. We will increase activity.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 20, 2024
This is also true for security commitments from partners. We are putting together new, strong bilateral agreements. January and February must produce more results in… pic.twitter.com/h8JVu83jLu
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The UK’s Ministry of Defence has reported that Ukraine maintains a presence on the left bank of the Dnipro River and has continued to repel Russian attacks despite “logistical concerns”.
The update added that a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern defence forces had remarked on 16 January that the logistical supply on the left bank of the Dnipro had faced difficulties.
The MoD said Russia’s Dnipro grouping of forces had been unsuccessful “in all its attempts” to dislodge the Ukrainian defenders, despite almost certainly having a significant advantage. However, it was “highly likely” that “poor training and coordination of Russian forces in the area is limiting their offensive capabilities”.
Forcing Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the left bank of the Dnipro remains a priority for Russia, the MoD said, adding that Russia would probably persist with attacks in the Krynky area in the coming weeks “despite growing personnel losses”.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 20 January 2024.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) January 20, 2024
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/38j12SJQ5P #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/2h0Vm36LbN
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Russian solider's wife calls for his return from Ukraine in defiant exchange at Putin's campaign HQ
The wife of a Russian soldier delivered an emotional appeal for his return from Ukraine on Saturday at the election headquarters of President Vladimir Putin – a defiant gesture in a country where open criticism of the war is banned.
Maria Andreyeva said:
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has issued a decree that my husband has to be there [in Ukraine]. I’m interested to know when he will issue a decree that my husband has to be home.
According to Reuters, she became involved in a heated exchange with a woman who told her Russian soldiers in Ukraine were defending the motherland and she should pray for them.
Andreyeva responded:
So what’s next? The ministry of defence has spent its money, now we need to squeeze everything out of our guys, get the last life out of them? So that they come back to us just as stumps?
Will they give me the stump? What will I get back? A man without legs, without arms, a sick man? Don’t you know what’s happening there?
The exchange took place during a visit to Putin’s election base by a small delegation from The Way Home, an organisation of soldiers’ wives campaigning for their return from the front.
Andreyeva told reporters her toddler daughter was suffering from arrested speech development because of her father’s absence.
She added:
All my family’s problems can only be solved by one thing – by my husband being demobilised. Because she is a completely different child when her father comes home.
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Russia has 'reinstalled mines' along perimeter of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
Russian troops have reinstalled mines along the perimeter of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in the occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast, the Euromaidan Press website has reported, citing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Although the plant, the largest in Europe, has been under Russian occupation since 4 March 2022, it continues to work.
According to the report, these mines, located in the buffer zone between the plant’s internal and external fences, were initially identified by the IAEA team and removed in November 2023, but they have now been reinstalled.
Euromaidan adds:
Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the IAEA expressed concern over this development, emphasising that the presence of mines contradicts IAEA safety standards. This area is restricted and not accessible to operational plant personnel.
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Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the Ukrainian Presidency, has referenced a quote from Winston Churchill in an interview with Le Figaro.
Discussing the war in Ukraine, he said: “Give us the tools and we will finish the job.”
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he included a link to the interview, writing:
We are counting on out partners, and we are also working to develop our military-industrial complex.
“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job”.
— Andriy Yermak (@AndriyYermak) January 20, 2024
We are counting on our partners, and we are also working to develop our military-industrial complex.
Said this in an interview for @Le_Figaro. https://t.co/Wsp4GGEoZm
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Romanian protesters have ended their blockade at the Porubne-Siret crossing along the Romanian-Ukrainian border, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the Border Guard Service.
Since 13 January, the crossing, which borders the Chernivtsi oblast, has been blocked intermittently by Romanian farmers and truck drivers citing the high cost of diesel, insurance rates, European Union measures to protect the environment and pressures on the domestic market from imported Ukrainian agricultural goods.
⚡️Romanian protesters end blockade, Ukraine’s border guard service says.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) January 20, 2024
Romanian protesters have ended their blockade at the Porubne-Siret crossing along the Romanian-Ukrainian border, Border Guard Service reported.
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Russian forces launched seven Shahed-136/131 attack drones against Ukraine overnight, four of which were shot down by Ukraine’s air defence, according to a morning update from the general staff.
Over the past 24 hours, Russia has launched at least one missile and 23 airstrikes, and fired 59 times from multiple launch rocket systems towards the positions of Ukrainian troops and populated areas.
Avdiivka, Orlivka and Novomykhailivka in the Donetsk oblast were targeted by airstrikes, while more than 110 settlements in Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts came under artillery fire, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing the update.
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Russia has lost 375,270 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Saturday.
This number includes 750 casualties over the past day.
According to the report, Russia has also lost 6,171 tanks, 11,455 armoured combat vehicles, 11,848 vehicles and fuel tanks, 8,868 artillery systems, 967 multiple-launch rocket systems, 654 air defence systems, 331 military jets, 324 helicopters, 6,934 drones, 23 warships and boats, and one submarine.
"High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation."
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) January 20, 2024
Charles Kettering
The combat losses of the enemy from February 24, 2022 to January 20, 2024. pic.twitter.com/7t8ZPDiSHN
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Here are some pictures coming to us over the wires from Ukraine.
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We sat down for an extended interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy the former actor who went from on screen President to war time President, loathed in the Kremlin but respected across much of the world. pic.twitter.com/OqmF64JkX9
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) January 19, 2024
In case you missed it, Volodymyr Zelenskiy gave an interview with UK’s Channel 4 News on Friday evening in which he said UK-Ukraine relations will stay strong whoever sits in Downing Street.
Zelenskiy told Channel 4 News:
The UK has been with us from those first days until now, and I have had that with all your prime ministers ...
He added:
But also with intelligence, we have very good relations.
Asked whether that will continue even if the Tory government is replaced at the general election this year, he praised the UK’s “strong institutions”.
“So people can be changed but institutionally, historically, the relations between countries we have to save,” the Ukrainian president said.
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Russian lawmakers have prepared a bill allowing for the confiscation of money and property from people who spread “deliberately false information” about the country’s armed forces, a senior member of parliament said on Saturday, Reuters has reported.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Duma, said the measure would also apply to those found guilty of what he described as other forms of betrayal. These included “discrediting” the armed forces, calling for sanctions against Russia or inciting extremist activity.
Volodin wrote on Telegram:
Everyone who tries to destroy Russia, who betrays it, must face deserved punishment and compensate for the damage inflicted on the country, at the cost of their own property.
He said the bill would be brought to the Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, on Monday.
Since sending its army into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has intensified a long-running clampdown on all forms of political dissent.
Under laws passed in March that year, discrediting the armed forces or spreading false information about them are already punishable by long jail terms.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our continuing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. Below is a summary of the latest developments to get you up to speed.
Russia has accused Ukraine of being behind a drone strike that sparked a huge inferno at an oil depot in western Russia on Friday, the latest in a series of escalating cross-border attacks. Russian officials and news reports said four oil reservoirs with a total capacity of 6,000 cubic metres (1.6m gallons) were set on fire at the oil refinery after the drone reached Klintsy, a city of 70,000 people located about 60km (40 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Air defences electronically jammed the drone but it dropped its explosive payload on the facility, the Bryansk regional governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said. There were no casualties, he added. The strike is the second on a Russian oil depot in as many days, part of what Kyiv has called “fair” retaliation for Moscow’s strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Separately, a fire tore through the Ryazan oil refinery, Russia’s third largest, on Friday, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper said, quoting emergency services. The fire at the oil refinery, south-east of Moscow and is controlled by Rosneft, has been put out and there were no injuries, RIA news agency reported.
US aid to Ukraine remains deadlocked in Congress despite Joe Biden signing on Friday a measure to keep the US government funded. Hard-right House Republicans, led by the speaker, Mike Johnson, are ensuring that the chances of more money and weapons for Kyiv in its fight with Moscow hinge on negotiations for US immigration changes. After a Wednesday White House meeting, Johnson told reporters: “We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security and sovereignty of Ukraine. But the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security.” Many observers suggest Republicans do not want a deal, instead using the issue, and the concept of more aid for Ukraine, as clubs with which to attack Biden in an election year.
A Russian court in Siberia on Friday sentenced a man to 19 years in prison for shooting a military enlistment officer, while prosecutors in St Petersburg asked for a 28-year sentence for Darya Trepova, a woman charged in the bombing of a cafe last April that killed a prominent military blogger, reports said. The developments underscore the authorities’ determination to harshly punish anyone who acts against President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, especially those committing acts of violence, in the run-up to the presidential election in March that the incumbent is all but certain to win.
The European Union said on Friday it would drastically increase ammunition production this year in response to Ukraine’s growing pleas for support in its war against Russia, which prompted the French ambassador to protest against the country’s “growing involvement” in the conflict. The EU will be able to produce at least 1.3m rounds of ammunition by the end of this year, the EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton said on a visit to Estonia. “We are at a crucial moment for our collective security in Europe, and in the war of aggression run by Russia in Ukraine, Europe must and will continue to support Ukraine with all its means,” he said.
Landmines once again surround the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which is in Russian hands, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday. Europe’s largest nuclear facility fell to Russian forces shortly after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Kyiv and Moscow have repeatedly accused each other of planning an incident at the site. “Mines along the perimeter of the ZNPP (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant) ... are now back in place,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement.
Nato will launch its biggest military exercises in decades next week, with about 90,000 personnel set to take part in months of drills aimed at showing the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia, top officers said on Thursday.
Finland does not see any immediate military threat from Russia, the country’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, said on Friday at a press conference with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson.
Britain brushed off a Russian plan to ban UK ships from fishing in Moscow’s waters on Friday as an example of Russia’s “self-imposed isolation”, while an industry body said it would have no impact because Britain’s fleet doesn’t fish there anyway.
The EU has started discussions on a new sanctions package for Russia that it aims to approve by 24 February, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.
About 160 people who applied for asylum at Finland’s eastern border last year have since disappeared, amid a sudden surge of asylum seekers arriving via Russia, Finland’s immigration authority said.
The Kremlin said on Friday there was no prospect of reviving the Black Sea grain deal and that alternative routes for shipping Ukrainian grain carried huge risks, Reuters reported.
Police in the central Russian republic of Bashkortostan on Friday arrested more protesters incensed over the jailing of local activist Fail Alsynov, who campaigns for the protection of the Bashkir language, as a court sentenced nine demonstrators to short jail terms, reports AFP.
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