December 9, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Ukraine is a "human rights emergency," United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said on Friday.

Turk said the country is "suffering" from not only continued missile attacks but from destroyed civilian infrastructure.

"The energy sector is heavily affected, the heating system, the electricity grid, there are people who live in sub-zero temperatures without heating, and without electricity," he said.

"There are these blackouts, so you can imagine these are millions of people who suffer this every day."

On Monday, Russia launched a fresh barrage of missiles toward Ukraine, cutting off water and electricity supplies in some areas and killing at least one person in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih and at least two people in Zaporizhzhia, according to local authorities.

A hospital in Kherson city was hit by Russian shelling on Friday morning, Yaroslav Yanushevysh, head of the Kherson region military administration, said in a Telegram post.  

The pediatric ward and morgue were damaged in the shelling, according to Yanushevysh. No injuries or casualties have been recorded so far.

On Wednesday, two people died after Kherson was shelled 51 times, according to Yanushevysh, who said Russians had “fired at peaceful settlements of the region with artillery, MLRS, tanks and mortars.”

Some context: Last month, Russian troops withdrew from Kherson city after having occupied it for eight months, in a humiliating setback. But Russia still retains control of much of the broader Kherson region.

The US will “soon be able to call” Sweden and Finland NATO allies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday following a meeting with his Swedish and Finnish counterparts, when asked about their admission into the defense alliance.

"I am convinced based on everything I know that we will soon be able to call both countries formally our allies … Finland and Sweden are already integrating into our work," Blinken told reporters at the State Department. "There can be no doubt on anyone's part that they are ready today to be members of the alliance."

Some context: Finland and Sweden asked to join NATO earlier this year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but have faced ratification delays from Turkey and Hungary. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused both countries of harboring members of the separatist militant Kurdistan’s Workers Party, also known as PKK, which Turkey views as a terrorist organization. 

Erdoğan has also called on Finland to publicly abandon the arms embargo it imposed on Turkey in 2019, after it invaded northern Syria. A step which Sweden — which had joined the embargo — took in September. 

NATO decisions are made by consensus, which means all 30 alliance member states must approve the two Nordic nations joining. Turkey is the only member that has voiced opposition to their membership, while Hungary is yet to ratify it.  

Swapping an American jailed for a minor drugs offense in Russia for one of the world’s most notorious arms traffickers known as “The Merchant of Death” might seem like a lopsided deal that could fuel dangerous national security precedents.

But President Joe Biden’s decision to exchange WNBA star Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout goes beyond the exchange’s bottom line. It represented a humane resolution to a painful dilemma that came after tortuous talks with a Russian regime that treats people as geopolitical pawns every day.

In that sense, the Biden administration demonstrated the gulf between its moral grounding and that of Russian President Vladimir Putin who is currently demonstrating his inhumanity on another front, with a fearsome assault on Ukrainian civilians.

But the tragic counterpoint to this diplomatic triumph — Biden’s failure to also secure the release of Paul Whelan, another American incarcerated in a Russian penal colony — underscored the unforgiving moral conundrum he faced. And it prompted top Republicans to charge that he had prioritized a basketball superstar over an ex-marine who benefited from a vocal political pressure campaign on Biden.

Read the full analysis here.

Brittney Griner's family expressed gratitude to President Joe Biden and his administration "for the tireless work they did to bring Brittney home" in a statement released Thursday night.

The statement added:

The Biden administration has ideas about “new forms of offers” it is going to try with the Russians in an effort to secure American Paul Whelan’s release, a senior administration official said. 

The official said there is a recognition that the US needs to make available “something more, something different” from what it has offered thus far. 

This position comes as Whelan told CNN the administration would have to look at what it has "that these people want, and hopefully give it to them, or I'll be here for a long time.”

Russia views Whelan as a spy, the administration official explained, which means it puts him in a different category. The official didn’t rule out the US offering a Russian spy in US custody. 

President Joe Biden had already personally informed Cherelle Griner that her wife was being released from Russian detention when aides arrived with more news: Brittney Griner was now securely out of Russia — and on the telephone.

Nearly 10 months after Brittney Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport, the jubilant moment in the Oval Office on Thursday amounted to the culmination of prolonged, frustrating negotiations and one painful decision that left another detained American disappointed and wondering what his fate may be.

In conversations across an array of government channels, Russian officials were clear with their American counterparts: they would release Griner — and only Griner — in exchange for a convicted Russian arms dealer nicknamed the “merchant of death.”

Because of the matter’s exceedingly high profile, it was certain those conditions had been set by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, one US official said.

Despite Biden’s attempts to link Griner’s case to that of Paul Whelan, a former US Marine arrested on espionage charges in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison two years later, it became plain recently that Putin would not budge.

Read the full story here.

A plane carrying Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout landed in Moscow following a prisoner swap for US basketball star Brittney Griner, according to Russian state television channel Russia 24.

Bout's wife and mother were waiting and hugged him as soon as he walked off the plane, Russia 24 footage shows.

The channel earlier released video of Bout boarding a plane, getting a quick medical check and calling his family.

Bout told a reporter in Moscow he learned that he'd be returning to his native country in the middle of the night — and that he "didn't even get to say goodbye to anyone."

Griner is expected to land in San Antonio, Texas, Thursday but the exact timing is unclear.

Who is Viktor Bout? Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death” by his accusers, is a former Soviet military officer who was serving a 25-year sentence in the US on various charges, including conspiring to kill Americans.

Read more about the convicted arms dealer here.

The Ukrainian military said settlements in the eastern Donetsk region and northeastern Kharkiv region have come under heavy Russian fire.

"More than 20 attacks from [Russian] multiple rocket launchers [are] on the positions of our troops and settlements along the contact line," the military said.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said Russian forces were holding their lines along the border between the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions and had shelled nearly a dozen settlements in the course of the day. 

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv region military administration, told Ukrainian television that in northern parts of Kharkiv, towns recently taken back by Ukrainian forces near the Russian border were constantly being shelled, including in Vovchansk.

Further south, the Donetsk front lines continue to see heavy Russian shelling in nearly 20 areas, according to the military, especially around Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Battles in the region have become a war of attrition involving mortars, tank fire, artillery and explosives dropped from drones — with much of the countryside pockmarked with craters. Neither side has taken any meaningful territory in several months along that part of the front line.

The General Staff said that in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, 22 settlements had come under fire, with two attacked by Russian aircraft. And there was also Russian tank and artillery shelling of nearly 20 settlements in recently liberated parts of Kherson region on the west bank of the Dnipro River.

Here's the latest map of control: