Russia-Ukraine War Briefing, January 2, 2023 - Carole Landry (NYT)

 

Welcome back to the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing, your guide to the latest news and analysis about the conflict.

Russia attacked Kyiv with exploding drones in a follow-up strike after missiles and drones were fired on the city over the New Year’s holiday. The global food crisis is worsening and has become one of the furthest-reaching consequences of Russia’s war. Ukrainian officials are cracking down on a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church that they say has been infiltrated by priests, monks and nuns who have aided Russia in the war. Get the latest updates here.

An image from video footage showed the aftermath of a Ukrainian missile attack at a vocational school in the Donetsk region on New Year’s Day.Reuters

A lethal start to 2023

Ukrainian forces used U.S.-supplied guided rockets to hit a building housing dozens of Russian soldiers in the eastern Donetsk region on New Year’s Day, Russian and Ukrainian officials said today. It was one of the deadliest strikes on Russian forces since the beginning of the war 10 months ago.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that 63 service members had been killed in the strike in the city of Makiivka while Ukrainian officials said about 400 Russians had died. A spokesman for the Russian-installed government in the Donetsk region, Daniil Bezsonov, called the strike “a massive blow” and suggested that Russian forces were partly at fault.

“The enemy inflicted the most serious defeats in this war on us not because of their coolness and talent, but because of our mistakes,” he wrote in a post on Telegram.

A former Russian paramilitary commander, Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, wrote on Telegram that “many hundreds” were dead and wounded and that many “remained under the rubble.”

The barracks set up in a vocational school were “almost completely destroyed” because “ammunition stored in the same building” detonated in the strike, Girkin said.

A report in Russian state media said that “active use of cellular phones by the newly arrived servicemen” in that unit had helped Ukrainian forces pinpoint their location and launch the assault using HIMARS rocket launchers.

The attack came as the war appeared set to grind on, with leaders of Ukraine and Russia vowing in their New Year’s messages to press on with their military campaigns and prevail. There appears to be little hope for peace negotiations in the near future.

President Vladimir Putin broke from practice and delivered his New Year’s address not from the Kremlin, but from an unspecified military base, flanked by soldiers. The Russian leader struck a defiant tone, asserting that “moral and historical righteousness is on our side.”

Russian soldiers, Putin said, were fighting to secure “peace and security guarantees for Russia,” while the West was using Ukraine “to weaken and split up Russia.”

In his own New Year’s address, President Volodymyr Zelensky recalled that 2022 had begun with fear over Russia’s invasion but ended with hopes for victory. “We have overcome doubts, despair and fear, ” he said.

“Let this year be the year of return,” Zelensky said of 2023. “The return of our people. Soldiers — to their families. Prisoners — to their homes. Immigrants — to their Ukraine. Return of our lands.”

Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities greeted the New Year with air-raid sirens and explosive thuds from Russian missile attacks.

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Russian paratroopers in Bucha on March 3, 2022.

A Times investigation into Bucha

An eight-month visual investigation by The Times has documented the killing of 36 Ukrainian civilians in Bucha during the Russian occupation, and identified the Russian unit behind one of the worst atrocities of the war.

The victims were killed along Yablunska Street in Bucha as Moscow’s forces sought to secure a route to Kyiv.

A team of Times reporters spent months in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew in late March, interviewing residents, collecting security-camera footage and obtaining records from government sources.

The Times concluded that the perpetrators of the killings along Yablunska Street were Russian paratroopers from the 234th Air Assault Regiment, based in the city of Pskov in western Russia and led by Lt. Col. Artyom Gorodilov.

One of the most chilling findings from the investigation came from a cellphone database that showed that several Russian soldiers killed Ukrainian civilians and then used their phones to call home to Russia.

Hours before Russian troops began withdrawing from Bucha, a lone Russian soldier, either drunk or high, went on a rampage, looking for wine. Through interviews with local officials, neighbors and family members, my colleagues Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko reconstructed a night of horror.

The soldier took Oleksandr Kryvenko, 75, at gunpoint and made him bang on the doors of private homes. They ended up at the large property of Oleksandr Rzhavsky, 63, a retired politician who apparently let the Russian and his hostage into his house. They sat at the dining table, and Rzhavsky gave them wine, according to neighbors.

Something snapped that evening, and the soldier, named Aleksei, opened fire on the two men at the table, killing Kryvenko in his chair with three bullets to the chest. Rzhavsky was shot in the head. The soldier then threw a grenade and injured his leg in the explosion.

The soldier’s unit fetched him in the morning and disposed of the bodies. But the grief of family members remains raw. Two women in the house at the time, Rzhavsky’s wife and his sister, hid and managed to escape injury.

What else we’re following

To provide comprehensive coverage of the war, we often link to outside sources. Some of these require a subscription.

In Ukraine

A Times investigation has identified and independently verified 339 Ukrainian cultural sites that sustained substantial damage in 2022.

Around the world

The Biden administration has embarked on a broad effort to halt Iran’s ability to provide drones to Russia. Some two dozen notable Russians have died in 2022 in mysterious ways, succumbing to what The Atlantic calls Sudden Russian Death Syndrome. From Opinion: Western diplomacy should seek not to avoid Putin’s red lines, but to change them, Nigel Gould-Davies writes.

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In the geopolitical realignment that has followed Russia’s invasion, India is pursuing its interests with a new assertiveness.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back Wednesday. — Carole