Monthly Archives: January 2024

In March of this year, Russia will hold presidential elections. The contest, like ones past, will be highly choreographed, and its outcome is preordained. President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for more than 23 years, will dominate the race from the beginning. Every media outlet in Russia will promote his candidacy and praise his performance. His nominal opponents will, in fact, be government loyalists lined up to make the contest appear competitive. When all the ballots are counted, he will easily win.

Yet even though the election will be a farce, it is worth watching. That is because it is an opportunity for Putin to signal his plans for the next six years and, relatedly, to test different messaging strategies. Analysts can therefore expect him to do two main things. One is to play up Russias struggle against the West. But the other is something that Westerners will find familiar from domestic politics: decrying socially liberal, or woke, policies. Putin will, for example, talk a lot about family values, arguing that Russians should have traditional two-parent households with lots of children. He will denounce the so-called LGBT movement as a foreign campaign to undermine Russian life. And he will rail against abortions, even though most Russians support the right to have them.

The parallels with the American right are not coincidental. Putin and his advisers have adopted the views and rhetoric of conservative American firebrands, such as anchors on the Fox News channel. The Kremlin has done so because, by embracing the culture wars, it believes it can win over support from populist politicians in Washington and elsewhere. In fact, Russia has already won international right-wing fans. Conservative leaders across the United States and Europe, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, have praised Putin. Some of them have suggested they are happy to compromise over Ukraines future.

Putins far-right rhetoric and policies are thus a form of statecraft. By championing such causes, the president appears to believe he can undermine Western societies from within. He likely thinks he can thereby tear down the rules-based international order. And he probably hopes he can replace it with a new, conservative global system with the Kremlin at its center.

When Putin first came to power, he was not a culture warrior. In fact, until 2012, the Kremlin was driven by a moderate agenda. Under his first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov, Putin focused on economic development. Although Surkov was an apologist for Putins authoritarian system, he did not despise queer people, immigrants, or women. Instead, he believed that the best base of support for Putin would be cosmopolitan middle-class voters, who tend to be relatively socially liberal.

But Surkovs theory was incorrect. Russias middle class may have supported Putin at first, but as his rule dragged on and became increasingly autocratic, this demographic became critical of the president. During his run for a third presidential term in 2012, hundreds of thousands of middle-class Russians even took to the streets in protest.

Putin won nonetheless. But the demonstrations were a turning point in how he thought about power. He felt betrayed, so he sidelined Surkov. His new chief political strategist, Vyacheslav Volodin, was a conservative ideologue who prompted Putin to focus on enlisting the support of Russias poor and its working class, who were considered more religious and conservative. As a result, Putins rhetoric and policies began to shift away from the economy and the middle class and toward cultural issues, playing up so-called traditional values and skewering a supposedly decadent West.

One of the first symbols of this reversal was a 2013 law, passed and signed at Volodins suggestion, that banned LGBTQ propaganda. In effect, the bill made it illegal for the media to describe nontraditional relationships in a positive fashion, and it banned gay characters from appearing in movies or television shows that might be viewed by anyone under 18. The law was not the only way Putins new regime worked to stigmatize the queer community. Kremlin-controlled media outlets also began branding LGBTQ people as both dangerous to society and inherently sinful. In August 2013, for example, Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of Russian state televisions evening news show, demanded that the government ban heart transplants from gay men killed in accidents. Instead, he said, their hearts should be burned.

At the time, such vitriol was still unusual in Russia, so Kiselyovs statements created a scandal. But Putin seemed happy. In December 2013, he created a new state-owned news agency and named Kiselyov its head. Kiselyovs promotion helped symbolize the changing nature of Russias media outlets. Before Putins third term, state television was dull and sedate. In 2012, however, state broadcasters began behaving as if they were on Fox News, the right-wing U.S. television channel known for drumming up outrage. According to a senior former official in Russian state television, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern about his safety, journalists were told to watch and mimic what they saw on the channel. Kiselyov, for his part, started acting like the Fox News star Bill OReilly, who was famous for his angry diatribes. That OReilly was no fan of Putinhe once called Russias president the devilwas of no concern to Russian anchors. What mattered, as the former official told me, was that OReilly had the flames of hatred bursting from his eyes: his news programs were exciting, with fury, fights, and shouting. Now, so were Kiselyovs.

The state broadcaster was not the only Russian outlet to borrow from Fox News. At the end of 2013, Jack Hanick, a longtime Fox News producer, came to Russia to help the businessman Konstantin Malofeev launch Tsargrad TV, a private far-right channel with ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. In the spring of 2014, Malofeev funded Igor Girkin, then a Russian military commander, as Girkin helped lead Russias invasion of eastern Ukraine.

Ironically, and much like many conservative politicians in the United States, Russias leaders are hardly paragons of right-wing principles. Putin, for instance, divorced his wife in 2014. Putin has not remarried, but he appears to have been involved with Alina Kabaeva, the former Olympic rhythmic gymnastics champion, since at least 2008. They are widely thought to have children together.

Many of Putins cronies are also divorced. Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin divorced his first wife in 2011 and his second in 2017. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin divorced in 2014. Arkady Rotenberg, Putins close friend and a major Russian businessman, divorced in 2013. If these were Soviet times, the separations would have damaged these mens careers; the Soviet Communist Party was ardently against divorce. But today, separations do not matter at all. Russia has, for many years, been among the world champions in divorce. Its current rate3.9 divorces per 1,000 inhabitantsis one of the highest in the world, well above the global average of 1.8. (The rate in the United States is 2.5.)

Putins culture war has not stopped at Russias borders. Beginning in the 2010s, for example, Russian politicians and propagandists began to bemoan the influx of migrants and refugees into Europe, declaring that the continent had lost its identity, culture, and spirituality to people from Africa and the Middle East. Many Euro-Atlantic countries have actually gone down the path of abandoning their roots, including Christian values that form the basis of Western civilization, Putin declared in a 2013 speech. Europeans, he said, have been unable to ensure the integration of foreign languages and foreign cultural elements into their societies.

Moscow has also waded into U.S. politics. When the Black Lives Matter movement took off in 2020, the Kremlin said the cause was a catastrophe for the United States. American elites themselves undermine the statehood of their country, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russias security council, said in an article. They use street movements in their own interests. They flirt with marginalized people who rob stores under noble slogans. Patrushev even suggested that there were places in the United States where whites are forbidden to enter, and local gangs will take over the police functions. Such remarks could easily have been written by the right-wing media personality and former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson.

Moscows anti-woke diatribes have, of course, come to feature Ukraine. In a 2022 speech celebrating Russias illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Putin avowed that his country was fighting to protect our children and our grandchildren from sexual deviation and satanism. In this view, Kyiv is now a vehicle for the West, spreading its corrupt liberal values into Russias rightful sphere of influence, and Moscows aggression is actually a defense of tradition. It is a way to make sure that every Russian child would have a mom and dad, not parent number one, parent number two, and parent number three, as Putin put it in September 2022.

In the Kremlins view, trans peoplethe supposed parent number one, parent number two, and parent number threeare especially threatening. As a result, they are now the target of extremely repressive legislation. In July, Russia passed a hastily drafted bill that banned hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery. It also prohibited people from changing their gender identification on passports, annulled any marriage in which one person has changed gender, and deprived transgender adults of the right to adopt children.

At a Russian Supreme Court hearing on whether to designate the LGBT movement as extremist, Moscow, November 2023

Gay cisgender Russians have not been quite so marginalized. But they have faced heavy repression, as well. In November, the Russian Ministry of Justice pronounced the international LGBT social movement to be an extremist organization and banned it. This law might seem to be of little consequence, given that there is no such formal movement. But in practice, the move has criminalized any show of support for gay rights and the very act of being gay in public. Today, any outward display of queer behavior in Russia can lead to a prison sentence of at least five years.

Moscows new right-wing measures are not just targeted at LGBTQ Russians. The Kremlin has also launched attacks on women, in part by promoting restrictions on abortion. At a recent public event, both Putin and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, criticized abortion, arguing that the country needed more native-born Russians to prevent the country from being overrun by migrants. At the end of the event, both leaders listened as a mother of ten made an orchestrated call to ban the procedure.

So far, no one has drafted a bill outlawing abortion, and the speaker of the Russian Senate, Valentina Matvienko, has promised that the country will not totally ban the right to choose. But regional governments have started prohibiting private clinics from offering abortions. Such restrictions on private clinics might expand in the years ahead.

Putins right-wing policies may play well at home, helping to justify his continued rule and the invasion of Ukraine. But domestic politics alone cannot explain his war on wokeand not just because it includes attacks on European immigration and the racial justice movement in the United States. Contrary to what Putin suggests, Russia is not a fundamentally conservative society. According to surveys by the Levada Center, for example, only one percent of Russians attend church weekly, and more than 65 percent of Russians say that religion does not play a significant role in their lives. According to other Levada surveys, roughly 65 percent of Russians support the right to abortion. Transgender people, meanwhile, make up only a tiny fraction of the countrys populace. Before Putin launched his attacks, they attracted almost no public attention.

Instead, Putins rants appear to be aimed less at a domestic audience and more at right-wingers abroad. They seem to be targeted at Europe and North America in particular, the two places where Moscow has lost the most support over Putins last decade in power. In both regions, mainstream leaders who have isolated Moscow are struggling to fight off insurgent right-wing politicians who support ostensibly Christian values. Increasingly, these populist conservatives are winning. And by embracing their rhetoric, Putin believes he can gain their support and, with it, find a way to improve Russias international position.

It is easy to see why the Kremlin believes such an approach is necessaryand why it will succeed. After Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, the West slapped sanctions on the country, and Putin found it harder (although not impossible) to do business with his usual partners in Europe. But the continents far right remained receptive. The French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen, for example, praised the annexation. She has also asserted that Putin is looking after the interests of his own country and defending its identity. Russian banks, perhaps not coincidentally, have provided loans to her party. It has proved to be a smart investment: In 2017 and 2022, Le Pen was the runner-up in Frances presidential elections.

Le Pen is hardly the only conservative Western politician who developed a loose alliance with the Kremlin. The surging far-right party Alternative for Germany has also been warmly received by the Kremlin, and many of that partys senior officials have spoken fondly of Moscow. One regional leader, for instance, described Putin as an authentic guy, a real man with a healthy framework of values. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who likes to rail against woke policies and the LGBTQ community, has become a committed Putin partner. Orban even blocked European Union aid to Kyiv, aiding Moscows war efforts.

But none of these parties or politicians is as valuable to Putin as former U.S. President Donald Trump. As a candidate and as president, Trump repeatedly complimented Putin, and should Trump win power again in 2024, he has suggested he might stop aiding Ukraine. Trump himself has never cited Putins policies as the reason he likes Russias presidentinstead, he has pointed to Putins supposed strengthbut Trumps advisers have. Steve Bannon, Trumps onetime chief strategist, praised Russias president for being anti-woke. Carlson, perhaps Trumps foremost media booster, delivered a speech in Budapest in which he said that U.S. elites hate Russia because it is a Christian country.

For Putin, then, far-right policies and rhetoric are an effective means of building international support. He is, in essence, forming a kind of Far-Right International, similar to the Communist International, which promoted the Soviet revolution in the first half of the twentieth century. As with the Soviet Union, which never practiced communisms philosophical tenets, it does not matter that Putin and his entourage violate their espoused principles. What matters is that those principles help him gain friends and undermine the liberal order.

Even if Putins vision does not come to full fruition, a far-right international would help strengthen his hand. He hopes that it might prompt Western states to weaken sanctions, for example, or to cut back on support for Kyiv. The result might be a more durable Kremlin regime. And for Putin, that in itself would be a win.

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Russia's War on Woke: Putin Is Trying to Unite the Far Right and Undermine the West - Foreign Affairs Magazine

When the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant last year for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a Moscow court launched a surprise counterattack: It ordered the arrest of a 70-year-old retired judge in Lithuania.

The judge, Kornelija Maceviciene, was not connected in any way to the case against Mr. Putin in The Hague or to investigations into Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Her crime, as the Moscow court sees it, was handing down unjust guilty verdicts against former Soviet officers, nearly all Russians, for their role in a brutal crackdown against pro-independence protesters who had gathered at a television tower in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, on Jan. 13, 1991.

In a bloody episode that helped seal the demise of Soviet power, 14 protesters one of them a young woman crushed by a tank were killed and hundreds of others were injured when Soviet forces stormed the tower in an abortive last-ditch attempt to prevent Lithuania from escaping Moscows grip.

After examining copious evidence showing who in 1991 gave the orders to use deadly force and who carried them out, Ms. Maceviciene and two fellow judges ruled in 2019 that scores of Russians, along with a few Ukrainians and Belarusians, were guilty of crimes against humanity, war crimes and other offenses.

That has put her in the sights of Russian authorities beholden to Mr. Putins view that the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about the unjust disintegration of historical Russia a preoccupation that lies at the heart of his military assault on Ukraine.

Setting the historical record straight as Mr. Putin sees it hinges on reframing the demise of Soviet power as a tragic injustice in which Russians were innocent victims, never perpetrators, of violent crimes in defense of Moscows empire.

And doing that requires overturning, or at least discrediting, guilty verdicts handed down by Ms. Maceviciene in Lithuania against the former Soviet military and security officers.

Ms. Macevicienes verdict was clearly unjust, according to an August ruling by the Basmanny District Court in Moscow that ordered her immediate arrest. Two fellow judges and the lead Lithuanian prosecutor in the Vilnius television tower case have also been declared criminals and placed on Russias wanted list for persecuting Russians.

In an interview in Vilnius, Ms. Maceviciene voiced disbelief and alarm that, more than three decades after the bloodshed at the television tower, Russia was now trying to edit out uncomfortable facts and punish her for adjudicating on the events of 1991.

I really cant figure out their logic, she said. The facts of the case are clear.

Saulius Guzevicius, a former special forces commander and an expert on hybrid threats, said Russias pursuit in recent months of judges and prosecutors had sharply escalated a yearslong campaign to rewrite the history of 1991 and discredit us as fascists.

They are sending us a message: We never forget those who went against us, Mr. Guzevicius said. During the Vilnius showdown in 1991, he was part of a security detail assembled by pro-independence activists to protect the Lithuanian legislature.

Under Mr. Putin, Russia has gone to extraordinary lengths to present itself as a guilt-free victim of Western powers and foreign fascists, rewriting history textbooks and punishing historians who delve into Moscows past crimes.

Yuri Dmitriev, an amateur historian in northwestern Russia who found a mass grave containing hundreds of people killed by Stalins secret police, was jailed for 13 years in 2020 on what his family dismissed as trumped-up pedophilia charges. Pro-Kremlin historians claimed, against all evidence, that the bodies include many Soviet soldiers killed by Finnish fascists.

Lithuania, dragooned into the Soviet Union in 1940, was the first Soviet Republic to declare independence from Moscow, setting an example in March 1990 that was later followed by Ukraine and 13 others.

For Mr. Putin, that process, which resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

Lithuanias efforts to hold accountable those who took part in the 1991 killings in Vilnius began with a trial in 1996 of six Lithuanians who had collaborated with the Soviet military.

The case expanded rapidly after a 2010 change in Lithuanian law to allow defendants to be tried in absentia. That opened the way for scores of former Soviet military and K.G.B. officers sheltering in Russia to be charged and judged by a Lithuanian court.

Of the 67 defendants convicted in 2019 by Ms. Maceviciene and fellow judges, only two appeared in the dock: Yuri Mel, a Russian tank commander; and Gennady Ivanov, another Russian officer in the Soviet military.

The others, including the former Soviet defense minister Marshal Dmitri T. Yazov, were found guilty in absentia of using military acts against civilians prohibited by international humanitarian law and sentenced to years in jail. Marshal Yazov died in Moscow a few months later aged 95.

Vilmantas Vitkauskas, director of the National Crisis Management Center in Lithuania, said that Moscow had no real expectation of getting its hands on Lithuanian judges and prosecutors and was engaged in a psychological operation aimed at spreading fear and caution to deter others from trying to hold Russian citizens to account.

Among those Russia wants to frighten off, he said, are Lithuanian prosecutors and police officers active in international investigations into war crimes in Ukraine. They are sending a signal: Dont mess with Russia, he said.

Russia has also opened criminal cases against three judges and the chief prosecutor in The Hague involved in the case against Mr. Putin.

For Lithuania, a Baltic nation that shares a border with the Russian region of Kaliningrad, getting the facts straight about 1991 is a matter not only of defending the countrys origin story of heroic, peaceful resistance but also of national security.

Like other formerly Soviet lands, Lithuania has always had a few citizens who lament the end of Moscows rule. But the war in Ukraine has turned what used to be seen as a mostly harmless fringe into a source of serious concern.

Russias full-scale invasion, justified on the pretext that Moscow had a duty to protect Ukrainians from fascism, has stoked deep alarm in Baltic States that pro-Kremlin groups, no matter how small, could call for help from Moscow. That is what happened in 1991 when a so-called Citizens Committee, made up of Soviet loyalists in Lithuania, pleaded for Moscow to intervene to crush fascists pushing for independence.

A Vilnius court last year ordered the liquidation on security grounds of the Good Neighbors Forum, a tiny grouping of mostly leftist activists seeking good relations with Moscow and the departure of NATO troops.

Erika Svencioniene, a member of the forum, was charged in December with endangering national security by helping Russia and Belarus and their organizations to act against the Republic of Lithuania. In an interview in her hometown, Jieznas, in southern Lithuania, she denied working against her country and accused the West of luring it into needless confrontation with Russia.

We were given Western sweets but they turned out to be very bitter, Ms. Svencioniene said. I know there is no democracy in my country, she added.

Algirdas Paleckis, co-founder of the forum, is a former leftist member of Parliament whose grandfather served as the puppet leader of Soviet-occupied Lithuania in the 1940s.

Before being found guilty in 2021 of spying for Russia, the grandson was at the forefront of a Russia-orchestrated campaign to deny that Soviet military personnel were responsible for the 1991 bloodshed. He insisted that Lithuanian nationalists had secretly sent snipers to the television tower to shoot their own supporters.

As Mr. Putin took an increasingly authoritarian and nationalistic turn over the past decade, Moscow moved beyond defensive denials and went on the offensive, with Russias intelligence service collecting confidential information about Lithuanian prosecutors and judges involved in the television tower case.

Among its helpers on the ground was Mr. Paleckis, who was jailed for five and a half years for espionage after he was found to have collected information at the behest of Russian intelligence about where prosecutors lived and other personal data. He denied working for Russia and said that he had been collecting information for a book.

Simonas Slapsinskas, one of the prosecutors targeted by Russian intelligence, said that he was unnerved by an announcement in September by the Russian news agency Tass that he was wanted by Moscow to face criminal charges over his persecution of those involved in storming the television tower.

He has stopped traveling abroad, he said, and confined family holidays to the territory of Lithuania. The whole family has had to restrict its movements, he said.

Ms. Maceviciene, the retired judge, has also curtailed her travels.

She said she was dismayed that Russia would try to overturn well-established facts. Of her own position as a target for Russian revenge, she added, I dont know whether to cry or be proud.

Tomas Dapkus contributed reporting.

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Putin's Drive to Rewrite History Snares a Retired Lithuanian Judge - The New York Times

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia vowed on Monday to continue missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, in retaliation for what he called a terror attack on the Russian city of Belgorod last week.

They want to scare us, to create a certain uncertainty inside the country, Mr. Putin said during a televised meeting with the veterans of the war in Ukraine. From our side, we will build up the strikes.

Mr. Putins rare public comments about an attack on the Russian territory comes as his armed forces in recent days have pummeled Ukrainian cities with some of the largest rocket strikes since the start of the invasion, and as both sides look for ways to break a stalemate on the battlefield.

The cycle of strikes and retaliation is raising fears of escalating civilian casualties in the conflict, which began in February 2022.

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Putin Vows to Keep Up Bombardment After a Russian City Is Hit - The New York Times

Returning to tradition after speaking flanked by soldiers last year, Putin delivered his address to the nation against the backdrop of a snowy Kremlin. In remarks carried by RIA Novosti, he described 2023 as a year marked by high levels of unity in Russian society.

What united us and unites us is the fate of the Fatherland, a deep understanding of the highest significance of the historical stage through which Russia is passing, the president said. He also lauded Russian citizens solidarity, mercy and fortitude.

The nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine was front and center in the address, with Putin directly addressing Russias armed forces involved in what the Kremlin has termed its special military operation in the neighboring country.

We are proud of you, you are heroes, you feel the support of the entire people, the president said. According to state media, he emphasized that Russia would never retreat and asserted there was no force that could divide Russians and stop the countrys development.

The address broadcast comes a day after shelling in the center of the Russian border city of Belgorod Saturday killed 24 people, including three children. Another 108 people were wounded, Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Sunday, making the attack one with the most casualties on Russian soil since the start of Moscows invasion of Ukraine 22 months ago.

As last year, New Years celebrations were toned down in Moscow, with the traditional fireworks and concert on Red Square canceled. After the shelling in Belgorod, local authorities in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok and other places across Russia also canceled their usual New Years firework displays.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russias Security Council and former Russian president, also congratulated Russians on the New Year. In video remarks posted to Telegram, he said that thoughts and hearts are with those at the front and that the past year had required a special stability and unity, and true patriotism from Russia.

Medvedev also called on Russians to make 2024 the year of the final defeat of neo-fascism, repeating Putins claims of invading Ukraine to fight neo-Nazis. The Holocaust, World War II and Nazism have been important rhetorical tools for Putin in his bid to legitimize Russias military actions in Ukraine, but historians see their use as disinformation and a cynical ploy to further his aims.

Analysts are describing 2023 as largely a positive year for Putin.

Its been a good year; I would even actually call it a great year for the Russian leader, said Mathieu Boulegue, a consulting fellow for the Russia-Eurasia program at Chatham House think tank in London.

Moscow in May won the fight for the bombed-out Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. In june, Putin defused a revolt against him and reasserted his hold on the Kremlin. A Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia started with high hopes but ended in disappointment.

As he enters 2024, Putin is wagering that the Wests support for Ukraine will gradually crumble due to political divisions, war fatigue and other diplomatic demands, such as Chinas menacing of Taiwan and war in the Middle East.

Putin is seeking reelection in a March 17 presidential election that he is all but certain to win. Under constitutional reforms he orchestrated, the 71-year-old leader is eligible to seek two more six-year terms after his current term expires, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036.

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Putin lauds Russian unity in his New Year's address - POLITICO

Russia battered Kyiv and Kharkiv with missiles and drones overnight, killing at least four people and injuring 92 more, after President Vladimir Putin said he was seething and would intensify attacks on Ukraine.

Moscow hit the capital with a combination of Iranian-made Shahed drones and waves of missiles for almost six hours, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration.

As a result of such a massive missile attack in the capital, unfortunately, there is destruction of residential buildings, damage to infrastructure. There are victims, said SerhiyPopko, head of the Kyiv military administration.

Since December 31st, Russian monsters have already fired 170 Shahed drones and dozens of missiles of various types at Ukraine, the countrys President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on social media. The absolute majority of them targeted civilian infrastructure. I am grateful to all of our partners who are helping us strengthen our air shield.

Putin said on Monday that he was seething at strikes on the Russian city of Belgorod over the weekend that the Kremlin blamed on Kyiv, and vowed to intensify strikes on Ukraine.

They want to a) intimidate us and b) create instability in our country, Putin said during a New Years Day visit to a military hospital, according to the Kremlins readout of the presidents comments. We will intensify the strikes, he added, saying that no crime and this [the attack on Belgorod] is certainly a crime against the civilian population will go unpunished.

Russia blames Kyiv for the air attack on Belgorod, which killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 100, according to the Kremlin.

Since Saturday, Moscow has hit Ukraine with nonstop drone and missile assaults.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one woman from Kyivs Solomyanskyi district died and dozens more were injured.

In Ukraines northeastern city of Kharkiv, strikes killed at least one person and damaged civilian infrastructure.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukrainesaidits air defenses had shot down all 35 of the Iranian-made drones Russia launched against several cities on Tuesday. But debris from the missiles hit several civilian facilities across the area, damaging gas pipelines and cutting off water and electricity in some areas, Klitschko said.

Its probably the biggest attack on Kyiv & [Ukraine] as a whole since the start of full-scale invasion. Urgent action in providing additional air defense capabilities needed, said Ukrainian MP IvannaKlympush-Tsintsadze in a post on social media.

This story is being updated.

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'Seething' Putin hammers Ukraine with massive missile and drone attacks - POLITICO Europe

Russia has intensified its bombardment of Ukraine, launching one of the most brutal attacks since the war began nearly two years ago.

A total of 158 missiles and kamikaze drones were fired towards six cities over the weekend, reported The Times, with targets including a maternity hospital and a kindergarten. At least four civilians were killed and almost 100 injured, according to UN estimates. The head of the Ukrainian air force said it was the largest missile attack of the war so far.

On Tuesday, Russia fired "a second massive barrage" on Kyiv, said the Financial Times. Ukraine has also "hit back", said BBC News, with attacks on the Russian city of Belgorod that have left 25 dead. In a New Year message, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia would "feel the wrath" of Ukraine's military in 2024.

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Vladimir Putin is "buoyed by Ukraine's failed counteroffensive and flagging Western support", said The New York Times (NYT) last month. But "in a recent push of back-channel diplomacy", the Russian leader "has been sending a different message", added the paper. "He is ready to make a deal."

Ttwo former senior Russian officials told the NYT that Putin had been "signalling" that he was "open to a ceasefire that freezes the fighting along the current lines, far short of his ambitions to dominate Ukraine".

"Russia has stockpiled missiles for a winter campaign designed to sap the morale of Ukrainians," said The Times's defence correspondent George Grylls in Kyiv. Ukraine's defence minister told the paper that it was "obvious" that Russia will continue attacking.

But domestic support for the invasion seems to be ebbing. About half of Russians want the war to end in 2024, according to a poll by Russian Field published on Friday. The number who fully support the war has almost halved since February last year, independent polling organisation Chronicle found.

The survey, published in December, "revealed that those who favour peace far outnumber pro-war voices", said Euronews. This is despite the "notoriously difficult" nature of polling in authoritarian states, especially as Moscow has "criminalised criticism of the war and spends millions on pro-war propaganda". Independent Russian polling company Levada found in November that the majority of Russians would support peace talks.

The Kremlin is "likely concerned" about the impact of public opinion on Russia's 2024 presidential election, according to an analysis of Chronicle's findings by US think-tank The Institute for the Study of War. Dissent is growing over mass conscription and poor medical care for soldiers. According to recent US intelligence estimates, Russia has lost "nearly 90%" of the personnel it had when the conflict began, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, a grass-roots movement has been "gaining momentum" recently, said The Guardian. The movement is led by wives and mothers of some of the 300,000 Russians conscripted in September 2022, an event that triggered a "wave of anxiety and unrest" and the biggest fall in Putin's ratings since he came to power in 1999.The Russian leader is known to care deeply about such metrics.

Many are "staging public protests", said the paper, and calling for "total demobilisation" of civilian fighters. During the first Chechen war in 1994, a similar anti-war movement of wives and mothers "helped turn public opinion against the conflict and played a role in the Kremlin's decision to stop the fighting".

At the moment, Putin "sees a confluence of factors creating an opportune moment" for a ceasefire, officials told the NYT a stalemate on the battlefield; Ukraine's stalled counteroffensive; its "flagging support in the West"; and the "distraction" of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Although the Kremlin "needs a ceasefire", it is "determined to achieve this on favourable terms", wrote Pavel Luzin, senior fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), in November. These terms include keeping control over all disputed Ukrainian territory.

However, there is "no evidence" that Ukraine's leaders who have vowed to retake their territory would accept such a deal, said the NYT. Ukraine has been "rallying support for its own peace formula", which would require Moscow to surrender captured territory and pay damages.

Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that he saw no sign that Russia was willing to negotiate. "We just see brazen willingness to kill," he said.

Some argue that Putin "wants to delay any negotiation until a possible return to office" by former US president Donald Trump, said the NYT. But others say the "ideal timing" of any ceasefire would be before Russia's presidential election in March.

Nevertheless, wrote political scientist Luzin, "as during the initial phase of Russia's war of aggression from 2014-2022, there is no doubt that Russia would continue to strike Ukraine even after a ceasefire".

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Will Putin agree to a Ukraine ceasefire in 2024? - The Week

Russia hit Ukraine with missiles and drones hours before the leaders of the two countries used New Years Eve speeches to their people on Sunday to offer starkly different messages at the end of another year of brutal war.

Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said the Russian invasion had already demonstrated his countrys strength and resilience and he called on Ukrainians to make an extraordinary effort and to do more.

Each of us fought, worked, waited, helped, lived and hoped this year, Mr. Zelensky said in a 20-minute video address delivered from his presidential office. No matter how many missiles the enemy fires, no matter how many shellings and attacks, he vowed, we will still rise.

A listener to the New Years address given by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, might be forgiven for thinking that the biggest land war in Europe since World War II was not taking place just across the border.

I want to wish every Russian family all the best, Mr. Putin said in a message that was just four minutes long, and delivered in a familiar setting for the Russian leaders end-of-year address, with the nighttime Kremlin illuminated in the background. We are one country, one big family.

In a speech that appeared intended to send a reassuring signal of normality to the Russian people, Mr. Putin only fleetingly spoke of the Russian soldiers waging war on his behalf, calling them our heroes who are on the front line of the battle for truth and justice. And he did not mention Ukraine or the West.

The familiar staging signaled a return to business as usual and was a striking departure from the New Years speech the Russian leader offered a year ago. That evening, angry, defiant and humiliated by a Russian retreat in northeast Ukraine that precipitated the Kremlins unpopular and chaotic military draft, Mr. Putin accused the West of cynically using Ukraine.

His short message on Sunday seemed to reflect his confidence in Russias ability to continue waging war without uprooting the lives of its citizens, given the failure of Ukraines counteroffensive and the flagging support for Ukraine in the West.

Mr. Putin made no mention of the tens of thousands of Russians who died this year in the bloody battles for Ukrainian cities like Bakhmut and Avdiivka. And he invoked only obliquely his narrative about Russias existential conflict with the West. There is no force that is able to divide us, force us to forget the memory and faith of our fathers, or halt our development, he said.

A day earlier, Russia sustained what appeared to be the deadliest single strike on its soil since Mr. Putins forces started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The attack on the Russian city of Belgorod left 24 people dead, Russian officials said, and wounded more than 100 others.

Russian officials blamed Ukraine for the attack, and on Saturday night they retaliated with strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, just 60 miles across the border from Belgorod. Residents there were jolted by multiple air-raid sirens overnight, as several waves of ballistic missiles and attack drones rained on the city center, injuring nearly 30 people and damaging private homes, hospitals and a hotel, according to Ukrainian officials.

These are not military facilities, but cafes, residential buildings and offices, Kharkivs mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said in a post on social media that included a video of firefighters trying to extinguish a blaze amid a pile of rubble.

Air-raid alerts wailed in many cities and towns across Ukraine on Sunday night, as local authorities warned against incoming Russian missiles and attack drones. Early on Monday, Oleh Kiper, the governor of the southern Odesa region, said on Telegram that at least one person had been killed in a Russian drone attack in the city of Odesa.

In the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in Ukraines east, heavy shelling from Ukraine killed four people and injured at least 13, Denis Pushilin, the Russian-appointed head of the broader Donetsk region, said on Telegram early Monday.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a Sunday statement that the attacks on Kharkiv had struck decision-making centers and military facilities, asserting that the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, which was hit by a missile, was housing members of Ukraines armed forces and intelligence services. The strike left a hole several stories high in the facade.

The hotel is one of the most famous in Kharkiv, and foreign journalists have often stayed there. The attack appeared to be the latest in a series of Russian missile strikes on venues popular with reporters. This past summer, Russian missiles struck a well-known restaurant and a hotel in the eastern cities of Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk.

The weekend air assaults in Ukraine and Russia capped a week of intensified attacks by both sides on land, sea and air signaling that neither Kyiv nor Moscow intends to de-escalate the war. In recent days, Ukraine hit a Russian warship and said it had shot down five fighter jets, while Russian forces made small advances all along the front line.

Our enemies can certainly see what our real wrath is, Mr. Zelensky said in his New Years Eve speech.

On Friday, Russia hit Ukraine with a huge and deadly air assault that breached air defenses and wreaked havoc in Kyiv, the capital. The attacks killed some 40 people, wounded about 160 others and hit critical industrial and military infrastructure, as well as civilian buildings like hospitals and schools.

The attack on Belgorod came the next day.

The Ukrainian government did not comment publicly on the strike, as is its usual policy when Russian territory is hit. But an official from Ukraines intelligence services, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the strike had been in response to Russias attack on Friday, and that only military facilities had been targeted.

Russia said on Saturday that the attack on Belgorod would not go unpunished, and it took only a few hours for Moscow to strike back, targeting nearby Kharkiv, with what Ukrainian officials said appeared to be short-range Iskander ballistic missiles. Kharkiv is so close to the border with Russia that air-raid alarms often have no time to sound before missiles hit.

Scenes of devastation emerged in the aftermath of the Russian attack. The lobby of the Kharkiv Palace Hotel was strewed with debris from the collapsed floors, a white piano and red armchairs covered with rubble. Tables that were set for dinner were swept by a gentle wind: the hotel restaurants windows had all been blown out.

In a nearby street, firefighters and city workers were busy clearing the pavement of debris that had fallen from shattered facades. Shards of glass cracked under their feet.

Mr. Zelensky said that Ukraine had endured 6,000 air raid alerts this year. Almost every night, he said, the country woke up to sirens and went down to the shelter to protect its children from enemy missiles and drones.

And almost every night, he said, after they heard the all clear signal, Ukrainians went upstairs and looked up into the sky to prove once again that Ukrainians are stronger than terror.

Laura Boushnak contributed reporting from Kharkiv, and Vivek Shankar and Jin Yu Young from Seoul.

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Putin and Zelensky Address Their Citizens on New Years Eve - The New York Times

With no end to the war in sight, U.S. intelligence estimates that 315,000 Russian troops have so far been killed or injured in fighting, as of Dec. 12, 2023. The Ukrainian government does not release casualty tolls, but Washington reported in August 2023 that the number of Ukrainian combatant deaths likely stands around 70,000. The U.N. approximates that more than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have died.

Nearly two years into the conflict, the Russian economy has weathered punitive Western sanctions surprisingly well. Thats in part because many countries of the global south have been reluctant to join what they see as a Cold War redux between the United States and Russiaand are upset about hypocrisy in Washingtons selective condemnation of Russias alleged wartime abuses versus, say, Israels.

President Vladimir Putins approval rating is at a sky-high 85 percent as of November 2023, according to the Levada Center, a reliable independent Russian pollster. The center cites public opinion surrounding Putins so-called special military operation and the conflict in Ukrainethe Kremlin has warned it will block websites that use the term war or invasion.

Putin, a staple of Russian politics for the past quarter century, likely needs no introduction in the pages of Foreign Policy. Yet it bears repeating that domestic office and global notoriety are nothing new to Putin. Now an indicted criminal by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, Putin began his career as an intelligence operative for the Soviet-era KGB before taking office as president in 2000. He has been in power nearly continuously since then, with a brief four-year stint as prime minister from 2008 to 2012 due to term limits. (Loyal apparatchik Dmitry Medvedev served as president during that time.)

Putins tenure at Russias helmwhether as head of state or head of governmenthas been marked by a descent into authoritarianism, rampant corruption, and systemic human rights abuses. Independent media has been all but shut down; political opponents are intimidated at best and allegedly poisoned at worst. Putin has battled Chechen separatists domestically and ensnared himself in numerous military campaigns beyond Russias borders. Even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia had annexed the Crimean Peninsula and supported Syrias Bashar al-Assad with a brutal bombing campaign in Syria. The Kremlin also fought wars in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and counts proxies the world over.

In a sign of how much Russian democracy has regressed under Putin, the president has decided that term limits do not matter in 2024 like they did in 2008. Until recently, Russias constitution forbade more than two consecutive six-year presidential terms. (Putin extended a terms length from four to six years in 2008, effective 2012.) But in 2020, when a member of Putins coalition conveniently proposed that the charter be amended to drop this rule, the president was on board. Though it was never in doubt, Putin made his candidacy for a fifth term official in December 2023.

The Russian presidential election will be a three-day affair from March 15 to 17. It is not expected to be free or fair and will almost certainly cement Putins stranglehold on the countrys political system. After the last presidential vote in 2018, monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said candidates competed on an uneven playing field and that, in Russia, elections almost lose their purpose. That year, in a flex of territorial muscle, Russia held votes for the first time on the annexed Crimean Peninsula. This year, Putin intends to extend the presidential contest to the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.

Technically, Putin has competition. But in practice, no other presidential candidate stands a chance. His main rival, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is behind bars and banned from running. Another potential contender, ultranationalist Igor Girkinwho has decried Putins posture in Ukraine as tepid and called the president cowardlyis also in prison. The long list of other politicians who have expressed interest in a run will likely register in the single percentage points.

Despite the bleak circumstances, voter turnout in Russia rivals that of U.S. presidential elections. In the 2018 presidential election, more than 67 percent of eligible Russian voters went to the polls.

The biggest challenge to Putins rule is likely already behind himand it didnt come at the ballot box. In June 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the paramilitary Wagner Groupa private contractor that had, until then, been seen as doing the Kremlins dirty work in military entanglements from Syria to Malirebelled against Putin in an armed revolt.

In Foreign Policy, Yale University professor Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon M. Huntsman Jr., and author William F. Browder called the mutiny the biggest existential threat Putin has faced in his more than 20-year rule.

Putin quickly quashed the revolt, and Prigozhin has since died in a plane crash, widely believed to have been caused by the Russian government. Former NPR Moscow Bureau Chief Lucian Kim wrote that, in the short-lived Wagner uprising, the full madness of Vladimir Putins dictatorship was on display. It will be that, too, when Putin extends his presidential mandate even further in March.

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In Russia's 2024 Elections, Putin Gears Up for a Fifth Term - Foreign Policy

Since November, more than 4 million Russians have passed through the exhibits of the new Russia Expo, a collection of 130 colorful, innovative, and surprisingly upbeat exhibits spread over nearly 600 acres of exhibition grounds in Moscow.

Some analysts suggest that the show is the very embodiment of Russian President Vladimir Putins electoral program in the upcoming reelection campaign, with voting to be held on March 17. They say it aims to knit Russias past and present into a single continuum of great achievements, with the emphasis on building a bright, unified, and prosperous future.

The new Russia Expo is offering the countrys public a view of its many regions and cultures. But experts say it also offers a window into Vladimir Putins vision of Russias present and future.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a Carnegie fellow who continues to live and work in Russia, says the expo is an old Soviet form thats been reinvented, modernized, and put to work to project Mr. Putins current vision of where Russia is headed.

Its not a coincidence that [a former Soviet exhibition site] was chosen for this purpose, he says. The grounds are filled with traditional symbols of Russian empire and achievement. The current message is that everything is OK; these are peaceful times. Putin can wage war in Ukraine, and develop Russia as well. We dont need the West; we can do it ourselves.

With the onset of the holiday week between New Years Day and Orthodox Christmas, Russians have been thronging the halls of the new Russia Expo, a collection of 130 colorful, innovative, and surprisingly upbeat exhibits spread over nearly 600 acres of exhibition grounds.

More than 4 million visitors have passed through the exhibits representing every Russian region, plus four occupied Ukrainian territories and Crimea, that make up the new Russia Expo, which runs from November to April.

That timetable also happens to coincide with the upcoming Russian presidential election campaign with voting to be held on March 17 in which incumbent Vladimir Putin is considered the top contender. After his first visit to the exhibition in early December, Mr. Putin seemed so pleased that he told a group of foreign ambassadors that they should also visit so that you can see with clear examples how Russia is developing, how it lives.

The new Russia Expo is offering the countrys public a view of its many regions and cultures. But experts say it also offers a window into Vladimir Putins vision of Russias present and future.

Some analysts suggest that the show is the very embodiment of Mr. Putins electoral program, aiming to knit Russias past and present into a single continuum of great achievements, with the emphasis on building a bright, unified, and prosperous future.

The central image on display at the exhibition is the success of Putin-era Russia. You see it reflected in every exhibit, in a multiplicity of ways, says Alexei Mukhin, director of the Center for Political Information, an independent think tank. The unspoken message of holding this big show at such a time is to demonstrate that Russia can wage war and deliver domestic prosperity at the same time. Outwardly, this exhibition is a clear projection of Putins vision for Russias future, and he is positioned as the person who changed Russia and makes that future possible.

The expo is being held on the sprawling grounds of the former Soviet Exhibition of Economic Achievements(known by its Russian acronym, VDNKh), which features vast green spaces and about 400 buildings, including many ornate Josef Stalin-era constructions that were built to highlight the former USSRs achievements, including space, atomic energy, industry, and arts.

The original Soviet exhibition was established in the 1930s to convince the population that the hard times of revolution, civil war, and famine were over and a bright communist future beckoned. After World War II, it was repurposed and expanded to showcase Soviet achievements in science, industry, and technology. It was modeled on the concept of a worlds fair, but one that would encapsulate the globally isolated Soviet Union, with its 15 diverse republics supposedly united by socialist ideology and scientific dynamism. Following the collapse of the USSR, the vast grounds fell into disrepair, and many of the pavilions were used by commercial companies to warehouse and market a bewildering array of goods.

Igor Ivanko/Kommersant/Sipa USA/AP

Children play at the Tambov region pavilion of the Russia Expo, Dec. 27, 2023, in Moscow. Every Russian region, as well as the four occupied Ukrainian territories and Crimea, has exhibits at the expo.

At every point, the VDNKh exhibitions served as an invitation to the population to come and embrace the states vision of itself,says Pavel Nefedov, curator of the museum.

This place has always been supported by the state, and it owes its continued existence to that, he says. In its original conception, it represented Utopia built on a limited territory. For the visitors, visiting the exhibition was a kind of symbolic reward. It was always a mirror held up to the country, but not one that reflected things as they were, but as the state thought they should be.

Even in the 1990s, when a veritable bazaar sprang up on VDNKhs ruins, it reflected the dominant idea of the time, a commercial marketplace. The communist symbols became vending platforms, Mr. Nefedov says.

In recent years, the Russian government has spent considerable sums renovating the territory and kept it open for people to roam the grounds. But until the Russia Expo was announced, the place seemed without purpose.

The present exhibition looks very much like a Putin-era reincarnation of its Soviet predecessor, with entries from 84 regions of Russia, plus five annexed Ukrainian regions, and pavilions for several major state corporations. It exudes a more festive atmosphere than the old Soviet fair did, with updated presentations that include holograms, robots, interactive displays, and a parade of associated events such as daily lectures, seminars, and forums on a wide variety of (mostly nonpolitical) topics.

Its not clear how much the Kremlin has spent to stage this show, but figures mentioned in the Russian media suggest its at least $60 million.

It has attracted huge crowds in its first several weeks, including large organized tours of schoolchildren. Nadya Titova, a journalists field assistant, says the fair appeals as a travel substitute.

Now that our borders are closed, people have less opportunity to travel abroad, so they are turning inward, wanting to see more of Russia, she says. An exhibition like this broadens the outlook, and maybe gives an idea of how many interesting Russian tourist destinations are still accessible.

The regional displays include attractions such as watching a simulated volcanic eruption in the Pacific territory of Kamchatka, taking tea in a Buryatian yurt, virtual river rafting in Krasnoyarsk, and listening to a robot explain the history of Birobidzhan, a Jewish autonomous region near the Chinese border where Yiddish is an official language.

The Crimea pavilion features a giant replica of the 12-mile-long Kerch Bridge which has been the target of Ukrainian attacks and an array of special effects designed to create the audiovisual, tactile, and even olfactory atmosphere of that annexed Ukrainian region, which hopes to become Russias premier tourist destination once the war ends.

The continuing war is a mostly silent subtext at the exhibits of the four Ukrainian regions that Mr. Putin declared officially annexed by Russia just over a year ago. The Donetsk pavilion features a coal mountain with a time tunnel that shows the regions progression from czarist times, through Soviet-era industrialization, to its trial by fire as a separatist region at war with Ukraine and its projected bright future as a province of Russia. The half-occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson features its agricultural potential and nature reserves, which left unmentioned are not presently safe to visit.

Andrei Kolesnikov, a Carnegie fellow who continues to live and work in Russia, says the exhibition is an old Soviet form thats been reinvented, modernized, and put to work to project Mr. Putins current vision of where Russia is headed.

Its not a coincidence that VDNKh was chosen for this purpose, he says. The grounds are filled with traditional symbols of Russian empire and achievement. The current message is that everything is OK; these are peaceful times. Putin can wage war in Ukraine, and develop Russia as well. We dont need the West; we can do it ourselves.

The Putin-era social contract, in which people pursue their private lives but stay out of politics, has been slightly amended, he says. Now you dont need to go to the trenches, but in return you must demonstrate your patriotism. Vote for Putin. Pay for a quiet life. Accept the new balance between war and normality.

Yaroslav Listov, a Communist Party deputy of the Duma, offers a more prosaic complaint.

To what extent do these displays correspond to real achievements? he says. Its apparently costing a lot. Wouldnt it be better to spend this money actually improving peoples lives than on expensive demonstrations of how life is supposedly being improved?

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In new Russia Expo, a look at what Putin wants his country to be - The Christian Science Monitor

Russia continues to intensify its missile attacks against Ukraine, capping off 2023 with what a top U.N. official called devastating violence against the people of Ukraine.

Between December 29 and January 2, Russia has launched about 300 missiles and 200 Shaheed drones against Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video post on X.

In the last five days, Zelenskyy said, Russia targeted, killed and wounded hundreds of Ukrainian civilians and called Moscows actions a missile terror.

Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted to portray Russia as the victim of Ukrainian terrorist attacks and the protector of civilians there.

Speaking with Denis Shamalyuk, a soldier at a military hospital in the Moscow region, Putin called a presumed Ukrainian attack on the Russian border town of Belgorod on December 30, 2023, an act of terror.

[What has happened in Belgorod] was a targeted strike on the civilian population. Of course, this is a terrorist attack; there is no other way to describe it.

Should we respond in kind? Of course, we can hit squares in Kiev or any other city. But Denis, there are children walking there, mothers with strollers. I understand, because I am quite angry, too, but I want to ask you: do we need to do this, target the squares?

Shamalyuk replied to this rhetorical question by saying Russia should strike military infrastructure, and not the civilian population.

That is what we are doing, Putin replied. We strike with high-precision weapons at locations where they make decisions, where military personnel and mercenaries gather, at other similar centres, and at military facilities, above all.

Putins claim that Russia is targeting military, and not civilian infrastructure, is false.

The attack in Belgorod was precipitated by what President Joe Biden called Russias largest aerial assault on Ukraine since Russia invaded it in February 2022.

Russias aerial attacks, launched on December 29, 2023, reportedly hit a maternity hospital, a shopping mall, and residential areas, killing over 40 civilians including 30 in Kyiv. Scores more were injured.

That would not justify a deliberate attack on civilian targets. However, it is not established whether Ukraine intended to target civilians in Belgorod, where apparent Ukrainian shelling killed about two dozen people. A senior U.N. political official condemned that attack as a violation of international law.

After the December 30 Belgorod attack, Russia responded with massive attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in Ukraines two largest cities Kyiv and Kharkiv.

In Kharkiv, a central hotel, a kindergarten, apartment buildings, shops and administrative buildings were damaged, the Associated Press reported, citing the regional prosecutors office.

Mirroring Putins language, Russias Defense Ministry said that it had hit decision-making centers and military facilities in Kharkiv, claiming that Ukrainian military and intelligence figures involved in the Belgorod attack were staying at the Kharkiv Palace Hotel.

Those claims are unsubstantiated. However, Germanys ZDF broadcaster confirmed its television crew were among Western journalists staying at the hotel at the time of the attack.

On January 1, Ukraine struck the Donbas Palace hotel in Donetsk, where unconfirmed reports suggest members of Russias elite in the Russian-occupied city had gathered.

Ukraine says Russia hit residential buildings, a supermarket, a warehouse, and gas infrastructure In Kyiv, depriving some parts of the city of electricity and water.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a VOA sister organization, reported that 11 apartment buildings were damaged in Vyshnevo, a town located just south of Kyiv.

Mykolaiv, Kropyvnytskyi and other settlements were also attacked.

Russia continues to target Ukrainian women, children and the elderly. The objects attacked by the Russian army were exclusively civilian, Ukraines foreign ministry said.

The December 29 attacks also fit into a broader pattern of Russia launching retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian civilian targets after Ukraine successfully attacked Russian military assets.

In this instance, Ukraine destroyed Russias Novocherkassk landing ship, docked at a port in Russia-occupied Crimea on December 26, 2023.

In July 2023, Ukraine struck the Kerch Straight Bridge, which links the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula with the Russian mainland. The bridge serves as a vital logistics route for Russia to supply its war effort in Ukraine.

In response, Russia targeted dozens of buildings and sites of cultural significance in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa. Russia then claimed, without evidence, the civilian buildings it struck were being used to prepare terrorists acts.

The July 23 attack was not the first time Russia targeted civilian infrastructure in retaliation for a strike on the Kerch Strait Bridge. On October 10, 2022, Russia launched dozens of missiles at Ukrainian cities in retaliation for the Ukrainian bombing of the bridge.

In Kyiv, Russia struck museums, an office building, a pedestrian bridge, a park, a busy intersection and other civilian areas.

That same month, Amnesty International said Russian forces were intentionally targeting Ukraines energy infrastructure to deprive civilians in Ukraine of heat, electricity and water as the cold grip of winter approaches.

Russia has not desisted in that wintertime war strategy.

Polygraph.info has documented other Russian attacks (and denials of attacks) on civilian targets, including a June 2023 attack on a Kramatorsk restaurant, an April 2022 attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, the March 16, 2022, airstrike on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol, and a March 9, 2022, airstrike on a maternity ward in Mariupol.

Mass graves and evidence of atrocities have also been found in Ukrainian towns after Russian forces were driven out.

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After Latest Round of 'Missile Terror,' Putin Denies Targeting Civilians in Ukraine - Polygraph.info