Russia-Ukraine updates: Russian anger grows over deadly attack

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to talk to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency.

The two leaders have had several phone calls since Russia invaded Ukraine last February. Turkey acted as a mediator alongside the United Nations in 2022 to set up a deal allowing grain exports from Ukrainian ports.

A patriotic group that supports the widows of Russian soldiers has called on Putin to order a large-scale mobilisation of millions of men and to close the borders to ensure victory in Ukraine.

Putin is under intense pressure to deliver victory in Ukraine more than 10 months since he sent troops as part of an operation he says was intended in part to defend Russians in eastern Ukraine.

“We ask our President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to allow the Russian Army to carry out a large-scale mobilisation,” the Soldiers’ Widows of Russia group said in a post on Telegram.

Zelenskyy says he has discussed further defence cooperation with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

“We agreed to intensify our efforts to bring victory closer this year already. We already have concrete decisions for this,” Zelenskyy tweeted after the pair’s talks by phone.

A spokesperson for Sunak said the two leaders “discussed the abhorrent drone attacks on Ukraine in recent days”. The British leader told Zelenskyy that Ukraine could “count on the UK to continue to support it for the long term”, the spokesperson said.

Together with 🇬🇧 Prime Minister @RishiSunak, we discussed further defense cooperation. We agreed to intensify our efforts to bring victory closer this year already. We already have concrete decisions for this.

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 3, 2023

Ulvi Zulfili fled one war as a child and found a new home in Ukraine, only to narrowly survive the Russian siege of Mariupol and have to flee again.

Read his story here.

A Ukrainian missile strike on Sunday on a vocational school housing mobilised Russian soldiers in the partially Russian-controlled Donetsk region has become one of the bloodiest incidents of the war.

Read more here.

Here are three maps that we update daily to chart the latest war developments:

The first regular shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States has arrived in Germany as part of a wide-ranging effort to help the country replace energy supplies it previously received from Russia.

The tanker Maria Energy arrived at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven, where its shipment of LNG will be converted back into gas at a special floating terminal, which was inaugurated last month by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Germany has rushed to find a replacement for Russian gas supplies since Moscow’s invasion. The facility in Wilhelmshaven is one of several such terminals being put in place to help avert an energy shortage.

Germany has also temporarily reactivated oil- and coal-fired power stations and extended the life of its last three nuclear power plants until mid-April.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Zelenskyy, has said any possible peace talks to end the war must take account of Russia’s aggression.

“The key thing must be kept in mind. Especially when you want to ‘talk about war or negotiations’ … RF [The Russian Federation] came to a foreign country to kill its citizens,” Podolyak tweeted.

“RF is massively shelling. RF is trying to seize part of foreign territory. RF is the only author of an unprovoked war in Europe,” he added.

Moscow has recently rejected a 10-point peace plan put forward by Zelenskyy that calls for Russia to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and withdraw all of its troops from his country.

The key thing must be kept in mind. Especially when you want to "talk about war or negotiations"
RF came to a foreign country to kill its citizens.
RF is massively shelling 🇺🇦.
RF is trying to seize part of foreign territory.
RF is the only author of an unprovoked war in Europe.

— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) January 3, 2023

Bulgaria has signed a long-term deal granting it access to Turkey’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and transit network, a move that will help the country replace supplies once provided by Russia.

The agreement between Bulgaria’s state-owned gas operator Bulgargaz and Turkish state gas firm Botas will allow the EU member state to unload LNG at its neighbour’s gas terminals and use the Botas network to transport gas.

Bulgaria, which was almost fully dependent on Russian gas ahead of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, is looking for alternative gas supplies at reasonable prices after Moscow cut off deliveries in April over Sofia’s refusal to pay in roubles.

Russian President Putin and his Kazakh counterpart, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, have held talks about cooperation in the energy sector, the Kremlin says.

The presidents’ discussions by phone followed Moscow’s approval last week of a 10-year extension of a deal with Kazakhstan for the transit of up to 10 million tonnes of oil per year to China.

The Kremlin provided no further details of the call.

Kazakhstan, the world’s largest landlocked country, uses Russia’s infrastructure to export its oil at a time when Western countries have imposed price caps and a ban on sea-borne Russian oil exports over the Kremlin’s Ukraine offensive.

A Russian missile attack has destroyed an ice arena in the city of Druzhkivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the country’s ice hockey federation says.

“Since the start of the war, the Russian occupiers have destroyed five ice stadiums,” the federation said on its Telegram channel, naming them as the Druzhba venue in Donetsk, arenas in Mariupol and Melitopol, the Ice Palace in Sievierodonetsk and now the Altair arena in Druzhkivka, which was hit on Monday, it said.

The Donbas ice hockey club – which started using the Altair arena in 2014, the year pro-Russia separatists proclaimed the creation of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” in the region – said the arena was destroyed by rocket fire.

Al Jazeera could not independently verify the reports.

Kyiv’s governor has urged residents to act if they hear air raid sirens and seek safety as soon as possible.

“Don’t lose your vigilance,” Oleksiy Kuleba said in a Telegram post. “If you hear an alarm, go to safe places.”

Russia has been carrying out rocket and missile attacks across Ukraine and targeting electricity infrastructure. Kuleba said the Kyiv region was currently fully supplied with electricity but asked people to use power “economically”.

Japan’s “anti-Russian course” makes peace treaty talks “impossible”, a senior Russian foreign ministry official has been quoted as saying by the state-owned TASS news agency.

Russia and Japan have not formally ended World War II hostilities because of their standoff over islands, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the war, just off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. The islands are known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories.

“It is absolutely obvious that it is impossible to discuss the signing of such a document [a peace treaty] with a state that takes openly unfriendly positions and allows itself direct threats against our country,” deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko told TASS.

Japan has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia and has moved to reduce its reliance on Russian oil and coal exports in recent months.

Click here for a roundup of the key events from day 314 of the war.

KEEP READING

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• Russia says 63 troops killed in Ukrainian attack on Makiivka
• Renewed Russian attacks mark Ukraine’s grim start to 2023

As the Ukraine war becomes a “hurting stalemate” for both Russia and Ukraine, is the prospect of outright success for either side becoming impossible?

Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, argues that Kyiv and Moscow will soon have to make “awkward and painful” compromises if they do not want the conflict to turn into a “forever war”.

He tells host Steve Clemons that many Americans still believe there can be a decisive “Hollywood ending” to the conflict but, as we have seen with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this almost never happens in real life.

Reinsurers are excluding Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from policies they offer and cutting back their exposure to US hurricanes, according to a report from reinsurance broker Gallagher Re, Reuters has reported.

January 1st is the most important date in the calendar for policy renewals and the first opportunity for many reinsurers to adjust 12-month policies in light of the war, which started last February.

Some insurers have already backed away from providing cover in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus due to the risk of sanctions or of steep losses.

Russian authorities have banned the use of Ukraine’s national currency in four regions that Moscow moved to unilaterally annex in September, the US-based Institute for the Study of War says.

All transactions in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia will have to be tendered in the Russian rouble, the think-tank said.

Russian-Occupied Areas Update:

Russian occupation authorities officially banned the use of #Ukraine’s national currency and announced that all transactions throughout occupied territories in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts must be tendered in the Russian ruble. https://t.co/2p3ZyiprJF

— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) January 3, 2023

UK’s defence ministry has said it is unlikely Russian forces will achieve a “significant breakthrough near Bakhmut in the coming weeks”.

Russian troops and Wagner Group mercenaries increased their attacks in recent weeks but many of these operations were “poorly supported”, the ministry said in its latest intelligence update.

The eastern city of Bakhmut has seen fierce fighting as Moscow seeks to capture the entire Donetsk region.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 03 January 2023

Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/dFqO3TLWgZ

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/1kwYmKRUlw

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) January 3, 2023

Ukraine and the European Union will hold a summit in Kyiv on February 3 to discuss financial and military support, Zelenskyy’s office has said in a statement.

Zelenskyy discussed details of the high-level meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in his first phone call of the year.

“The parties discussed expected results of the next Ukraine-EU summit to be held on February 3 in Kyiv and agreed to intensify preparatory work,” the statement read.