As the war enters its 699th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Tuesday, January 23, 2024.
Fighting
- Russia said it would take all “necessary measures” to defend its citizens and key infrastructure from Ukrainian attacks. On Sunday, two alleged Ukrainian drones hit a major Baltic Sea terminal starting a fire. Towns near the border, including Belgorod, have also come under fire with at least 21 people killed in an attack at the end of last year.
- Kyiv said it shot down eight Russian attack drones launched against southern and central regions of the country.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov clashed with the United States and Ukraine at a United Nations Security Council meeting where Moscow ruled out any peace plan backed by Kyiv and its Western allies, and China warned that further global chaos could impact the slowing global economy. Lavrov dismissed Kyiv’s peace plan as a “road to nowhere”.
- On a visit to Kyiv, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised to keep supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, which he described as a battle between “good and evil“. He also said he wanted to resolve differences over grain shipments and trucking that had recently soured ties between the neighbours.
- The website for Russian politician Boris Nadezhdin, who has criticised the invasion of Ukraine as a “fatal mistake”, said he had so far secured some 85,000 signatures backing him as a candidate in the March presidential election. Under Russian electoral law, Nadezhdin needs 100,000 signatures by the end of January to be allowed to run.
- Russia’s parliament began considering a bill that would allow the state to seize the property of those convicted of defamation of the security forces, including by criticising the war in Ukraine.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ukrainians abroad for their support during Russia’s invasion and proposed changing the constitution to allow for dual citizenship.
Weapons
- The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading think tank, said the war in Ukraine had undermined Russia’s confidence in its conventional forces and increased the importance of non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs) as a means of deterring and defeating NATO in any potential future conflict. NSNWs include all nuclear weapons with a range of up to 5,500km (3,400 miles). IISS said the logic of using such weapons would be to escalate a conflict in a controlled fashion, “either to prevent the US and NATO from engaging, or to coerce them into war termination on Russian terms”.
