The Kremlin tightened laws again and threatened opponents of the war with life imprisonment. The US could soon supply armored personnel carriers to the Ukrainian army. Selenskyj calls Russia “the biggest terrorist in the world” and calls for a war crimes tribunal. The night at a glance.
Protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war policy will be punished even more severely in future. The American Institute for War Studies (ISW) reports that Putin personally signed an amendment to the Russian Criminal Code on Thursday. Authorities can now sentence Russians to life imprisonment for “supporting anti-state activities” as well as “training for the purpose of sabotage activities” and “organizing a sabotage community”. Merely participating in such a community is punishable by five to ten years in prison.
A clear sign for the analysts of the ISW: “The Kremlin continues to manipulate Russian law in order to use vague formulations to grant the state ever more far-reaching powers to eliminate dissidents and threaten sympathizers of Ukraine,” says their assessment of the situation.
The US Department of Defense is currently considering sending stocks of its Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine. This is reported by the Bloomberg news agency, citing sources familiar with the process. The US armored personnel carriers, which entered service in 1981, are said to be part of a new military aid package to Ukraine.
In the night of Friday there should have been another air alert in Kyiv, Cherkassy and Kirovograd. As the “Kyiv Independent” reports, Russia is said to have tried again to attack civilian infrastructure with drones. According to Governor Oleksy Kuleba, all the drones around Kyiv were shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.
The “status of the world’s greatest terrorist” will affect Russia and its citizens for a long time to come, said Zelenskyy. “And every missile only confirms that this all has to end in a tribunal, that’s exactly how it will be.” to win over Nazi criminals.
According to the Ukrainian government, with its rocket attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, Russia is ultimately harming itself and its citizens. “With each such missile attack, Russia is only driving itself deeper into a dead end” and is heading towards an international criminal tribunal, said President Volodymyr Zelenskyj in his daily video address on Thursday evening – just a few hours after the most recent Russian large-scale attack with cruise missiles and so-called kamikaze drones. If Zelenskyj has his way, one day politicians and the military from Russia should also take responsibility for the war of aggression against Ukraine.
According to Zelenskyy, the latest Russian missile attack has again caused serious damage to the energy grid in large parts of Ukraine. Regarding possible further attacks, he warned: “This year has two days left, maybe the enemy will try again to make us celebrate the New Year in the dark.”
After a missile was found on Belarusian territory, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense offered to cooperate in investigating the incident. A ministry statement released on Thursday evening said the agency was ready for an “objective investigation into the incident.” State media in the Belarusian capital Minsk had reported that a missile launched by the S-300 air defense system had fallen on Belarusian territory on Thursday morning.
The Ministry of Defense in Kyiv pointed out that Ukraine was attacked by a wave of Russian cruise missiles on Thursday. “Therefore, a provocation by the terrorist state of Russia cannot be ruled out, which has chosen a flight path for its cruise missiles in order to provoke their launch in the airspace over Belarus,” it said. That would be a similar incident as in November, when a rocket fell on Polish territory.
Belarus is not directly involved in hostilities in Ukraine. However, ruler Alexander Lukashenko has given Russian troops the military bases in his country for attacks on neighboring Ukraine.
According to the Ukrainian armed forces, they have attacked Russian bases in the vicinity of the industrial and port city of Berdyansk in the south-east of the country. The general staff in Kyiv announced that around 50 Russian soldiers were “liquidated”. The information could not be independently verified.
The military in Kyiv did not provide any information about the weapon systems used to attack Berdyansk. The city on the Azov Sea lies almost 100 kilometers behind the current front lines.
Heavy fighting shook the area around the front-line town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine again on Thursday. The military leadership in Kyiv announced that advances by the Russian armed forces had once again been repulsed there.
The Ukrainian armed forces are likely to continue to receive important support in the form of arms and ammunition from the USA. On Thursday evening (local time), US President Joe Biden signed his government’s new budget law, which among other things provides for billions in aid for Ukraine. The budget, previously approved by both chambers of Congress, is worth $1.7 trillion, of which nearly $858 billion is for defense spending. Around 45 billion US dollars have been earmarked for supporting Ukraine.
A good ten months after the start of the war, according to the Ukrainian presidential adviser Alona Verbytska, thousands of soldiers and civilians are missing in Ukraine. “Russia has currently confirmed 3,392 Ukrainian prisoners of war, but 15,000 people are currently missing in Ukraine, including many civilians,” she told the editorial network Germany (Friday). The fate of these people is completely uncertain, said Verbytska, who works as an ombudswoman for the rights of Ukrainian soldiers. “We don’t know what happened to them.”
