Fuel depot far inside Russia burns in drone strike; US and allies censure North Korean supply of missiles to Putin; Ukraine short of air defence missiles
Two drones hit and set on fire a fuel facility in the Russian city of Oryol, 230 miles south of Moscow and 137 miles from the Ukrainian border, said the local governor, Andrei Klychkov.
Roman Starovoit, the governor of the Russia’s Kursk region, said the village of Gornal, Sudzhansky district, was shelled “from the Ukrainian side” with one person killed.
The Kremlin said the Russian military would do everything in its power to tackle an increase in Ukrainian shelling of the border city of Belgorod, which is a staging point for Russia’s invasion forces and has come under shelling and drone attacks for months.
The White House said Russia had launched multiple missiles sourced from North Korea into Ukraine on 6 January and the US would demand at the UN security council that Russia be held accountable. North Korea’s apparent export of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) to Russia violates UN law.
A joint statement signed by the US, UK, EU, Australia, Germany, Canada and other partner nations said: “We are deeply concerned about the security implications that this cooperation has in Europe, on the Korean Peninsula, across the Indo-Pacific region, and around the world … We condemn in the strongest possible terms [North Korea’s] export and Russia’s procurement of [North Korea’s] ballistic missiles, as well as Russia’s use of these missiles against Ukraine.”
Ukraine has been repelling Russian cyber-attacks on state payment systems for the second week in a row, senior lawmaker Danylo Hetmantsev said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is scheduled to deliver a “special address” to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos next week. The conflict in the Middle East is set to dominate the annual forum, held this year under the theme Rebuilding Trust.
Ukraine’s power grid operator said severe winter weather had left more than 1,000 towns and villages without electricity in nine regions, as the energy system has been weakened by Russian strikes. Ukraine had to import electricity from neighbouring Romania and Slovakia, Ukrenergo said.
Russian investigators said they had arrested three people over heating outages south of Moscow that have sent regional officials scrambling to restore services. Authorities blamed the breakdown on failures at a boiler plant owned by a private ammunition factory. The deputy head of the local administration was also detained.
Sweden is providing about 50m krona (£3.8m) to the Nato assistance fund for Ukraine, the Swedish embassy in Kyiv wrote on X.
Hungary indicated that it might lift its veto over EU aid to Ukraine if the funding is reviewed each year, Politico reported. Three EU diplomatic sources said Budapest indicated it might withdraw its opposition if the European Council unanimously approves the funding on a yearly basis, meaning Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, could extract concessions from the bloc.
Ukraine has a deficit of anti-aircraft guided missiles after recent Russian attacks, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat was quoted as saying. “Ukraine has spent a considerable reserve on those three attacks that took place,” Ihnat told Ukrainian TV.
