For a second day….
The Ukraine attacked Russian with rocket drone attacks….
Which brought more Russian rocket attacks….Not drone which Russia seems to have run out of…
More POW swaps….
Here’s what we know:
After two days of drone attacks inside Russia, a State Department spokesman said the United States was not “enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.”
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The U.S. stopped short of condemning attacks inside Russia, but said it did not encourage them.New
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The latest drone strike hits an oil facility near an air base 80 miles from the Ukrainian border.
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Experts say its likely old Soviet surveillance drones were used to strike inside Russia.New
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Western officials see little immediate threat of Russia escalating over strikes within its territory.
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A timeline of attacks on Russian territory during the Ukraine war.
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Embassies in Denmark and Romania receive ‘dangerous parcels,’ Ukraine says.
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Russia strikes Ukraine’s energy grid on one of the coldest days of the year…..
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Russian officials did not directly accuse Ukraine in Tuesday’s attack, which hit an oil depot in the Kursk region, 80 miles from the border.
But the back-to-back drone strikes over two days were widely seen as another sign of Kyiv’s willingness to bring the war closer to Moscow.
Ukraine’s attacks far inside Russia’s border have altered the geography of the war, showing holes in Moscow’s air defense and signaling a determination to make Russia pay a heavier price for its unrelenting assault on Ukraine’s civilians.
After Monday’s strikes, Russia launched a volley of missiles at Ukraine that left half of the capital region of Kyiv without electricity and worsened rolling power outages across the country. Many Ukrainians have been without heat and water in frigid temperatures.
Monday’s attacks struck two military installations hundreds of miles inside the Russian border — the Engels airfield and the Dyagilevo military base — according to Russia’s Defense Ministry and a senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to convey sensitive information.
The drones were launched from Ukrainian territory, and in at least one of the strikes, Ukrainian special forces working near the base helped guide the drones to the target, the senior official said….
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Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
- “These were Ukrainian drones — very successful, very effective,” the senior Ukrainian official said of the strikes, which signal a potentially serious security lapse by Russia. The official added that Moscow has “sowed the seeds of anger, and they’ll reap the whirlwind.” He said he could not comment on whether the drones were launched from Ukrainian territory or whether special forces were involved.
- The U.S. “have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said, speaking to reporters during a U.S.-Australia event in Washington. The United States has provided Ukraine with defensive supplies to use against Russia on its own territory; citing ongoing Russian attacks on Ukraine and its energy grid, Blinken said the U.S. remained determined to ensure Ukraine could defend itself. The U.S. is “absolutely not” working to prevent Ukraine from developing its own ability to strike Russia, said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who appeared with Blinken.
- Russia appears to have run out of Iranian drones, and there is no sign that fresh supplies are on the way, a Western official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Tuesday. Russia has not used Iranian drones in its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure since mid-November, and there is also no indication that a proposed deal to manufacture the drones in Russia is near completion, the official said. The slow-moving, noisy drones have in any case proved increasingly ineffective as Ukrainian air defenses have adapted, Western and Ukrainian officials say.
- Russia said there are no direct negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv on the issue of a security zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he was nearing an agreement between the two sides to safeguard the facility. “We are discussing the possible parameters of a declaration on the establishment of a zone of protection,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. But under no circumstances would Russian forces withdraw from the plant, she added.
- Russia and Ukraine carried out a prisoner swap Tuesday, exchanging 60 prisoners each, officials said. Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, told Reuters that some of the returned Ukrainian prisoners were those who held out in the besieged city of Mariupol earlier this year. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the Russian prisoners would be flown to Moscow to receive medical care and psychological support, Reuters reported.
- The Monday drone strikes on Russian military bases angered pro-Moscow military bloggers, who criticized officials for not anticipating and preventing the attacks, according to the Institute for the Study of War. “Several prominent Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups must have launched the strike against the Engels-2 air base from inside Russian territory,” the Washington-based think tank reported.
- Russia appears to be capable of producing guided missiles despite heavy sanctions, weapons analysts say. Conflict Armament Research, an investigative organization based in Britain, examined two cruise missiles that struck Kyiv last month and concluded that they were produced in recent months, even after export controls prohibited vital components from reaching Russia. The group said Russia could be producing the weapons using a supply workaround or stockpiled components from the United States and Europe.
