Countries with price caps should no longer be allowed to buy oil from Russia. In the Luhansk region, more and more Russian soldiers are deserting and running away. Now Putin’s army is increasing the number of patrols. What happened that night in the Ukraine war.
A document published on Tuesday said about the oil export ban: “Supplies of Russian oil and oil products to foreign companies and individuals are prohibited if the mechanism for fixing a price ceiling is directly or indirectly built into these contracts.” The ban on oil transport takes effect on February 1st. For oil products such as gasoline and diesel, the Russian government should set the exact date, although it cannot be earlier than February 1, the decree says. Initially, the decree is valid until July 1, 2023.
The price cap for Russian oil was decided by the EU at the beginning of December and is currently 60 US dollars (57 euros) per barrel (159 litres). The G7 countries, Australia and Norway have joined the measure. The price cap is one of the sanctions with which the West is responding to Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Zelenskyi announced his annual state of the nation address to Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada. “I want this message not to be a report, but our dialogue with you about the coming year,” the 44-year-old said in his daily video address on Tuesday. It is about formulating the tasks for the future. The speech is expected by the end of the week, but Selenskyj did not give an exact date.
The Ukrainian President also reported on his meeting with the General Staff. The situation in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass and especially around the small towns of Kreminna and Bakhmut was discussed. The industrial town of Bakhmut in the north of the Donetsk region has been the subject of fighting for months. The situation has recently deteriorated near Kreminna, a small town north of it in the Luhansk region.
In the occupied Luhansk region, more and more soldiers are running away from the Russian army and deserting. This is reported by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Facebook.
According to the report, this situation arose due to significant casualties suffered by Putin’s army in Luhansk. To keep the situation under control, the Russian military leadership has increased patrols to arrest and repatriate deserters.
The Ukrainian leadership has criticized Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban for his stance on the Ukraine war. “The remarks made by Hungary’s prime minister demonstrate pathological contempt for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people who oppose Russian aggression, and political short-sightedness,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said on its website on Tuesday. The trigger was a statement by Orban that the war could be ended if the US stopped providing arms to Kyiv.
What can be important on Wednesday:
The Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, is expecting Zelensky’s annual address to MPs this week. The exact date is not given for security reasons.
After a suspected Ukrainian drone attack on the Engels-2 military base, Russia is said to have relocated several fighter jets stationed there. This was announced on television by the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuriy Ihnat. The military base near the city of Saratov was attacked by drones in early December. At that time, according to Russian information, two fighter jets were damaged. Three Russian soldiers are said to have died in the current attack.
The incident is explosive again, as Ukraine is believed to be able to reach destinations far into Russia’s interior. Mainly long-range bombers are stationed at the “Engels-2” base, which are responsible for the attacks on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The airfield is about 600 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border. Satellite images showed damage to Russian fighter jets after the blast. The renewed drone strike suggests that Ukrainian defenses are incomplete.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sees the USA as the main culprit and at the same time the greatest beneficiary of the Ukraine war. The strategic goal of the USA and its allies in NATO is a “victory over Russia on the battlefield” in order to weaken or even destroy Russia, Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian state agency TASS on Tuesday.
He also demanded that Ukraine must comply with Moscow’s proposals in four areas. Otherwise, the Russian military would intervene.
Lavrov also declared that the West wanted to kill Putin. “There, some ‘unnamed officials’ from the Pentagon actually threatened to deal a ‘decapitation blow’ to the Kremlin – in fact, we are talking about threatening the physical elimination of the Russian head of state,” Lavrov says indignantly. So far, those threats could not be independently verified. It is therefore questionable whether Lavrov is not inventing the alleged threats for propaganda purposes.
In the Russian-held town of Makiivka in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, several men robbed and killed a family of eight. Four children were among the victims, Russian and Ukrainian media reported unanimously on Tuesday. Cash, cellphones and a car were stolen during the robbery. According to the Russian state agency TASS, three suspects have already been arrested.
According to Ukrainian media, the suspects are members of the notorious Wagner mercenaries. This had recently recruited new members in Russian prisons.
According to the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB, four saboteurs were killed on the Russian-Ukrainian border. The FSB said the Ukrainians were “liquidated” trying to cross the border in the Bryansk region. They were said to have carried home-made explosive devices, foreign arms and ammunition, and communications and navigation equipment to carry out terrorist attacks on Russian territory. Ukrainian media reported that the men were performing military duties against Russia’s war of aggression.
A soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces confirmed the death of his comrades in the Telegram news channel. He published names and photos of them. However, he assumed that the men were killed by a mine explosion. According to the FSB, they were already killed on December 25.
The city administration warns the residents of the Ukrainian capital of ongoing power outages. “We will have to live under these conditions all winter,” said the deputy chief of the city administration, Petro Pantelyev, on Ukrainian television on Tuesday.
