December 6, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

A top US State Department official on Tuesday suggested that Ukrainians were behind the recent drone strikes on two Russian bases and directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of committing war crimes by targeting civilian populations and infrastructure.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland noted that “nobody has claimed responsibility” for the drone strikes on the Russian bases Monday.

“But the targets were the very precise bombers that the Russians have been using to attack critical infrastructure,” she said, noting that “the Ukrainian people are incredibly innovative; they are making their own drones, air and sea, that are incredibly effective.”

Nuland, who just returned from a trip to Kyiv, said the US policy of not providing Ukraine with offensive weaponry that could strike Russian territory has not changed. 

“As I said, the Ukrainians are enormously innovative. They are working very hard with their own technologies and their own equipment,” she told Amanpour.

Although US officials have said that war crimes are being committed in Ukraine, they've often shied away from definitively naming specific acts or actors, citing ongoing investigations into the crimes. President Joe Biden in March did label Putin a "war criminal."

Nuland directly called out the Russian leader for war crimes.

Nuland said Putin had initiated a new phase to the war, noting that “when he couldn't win on the battlefield, he decided to try to freeze Ukraine.”

On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Ukrainians were collecting war crimes evidence, but said he did not “want to prejudge where this is going.”

“I don’t want to prejudge it, but all I can say is this: Accountability for what’s happened is very important,” he said.

The head of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine said Russia has nearly exhausted its arsenal of high-precision missiles and has so far not received ballistic missiles from Iran.

Kyrylo Budanov said on Ukrainian television that Russian stocks of high-precision missile weapons "are already coming to an end."

"However, as we see, they decided to go to the end, to zero, which, in fact, is very bad for the Russian Federation itself and the military there are aware of this problem," he said.

CNN is unable to verify the level of Russian missile stocks, which has previously been underestimated by Ukrainian officials.

"In reality, they have [missiles] for a few more large-scale attacks and they will reach full zero," he claimed.

Budyanov also said that "as of now, Iran has not delivered any ballistic missile to Russia."

He also sounded bullish about the overall military situation, saying, "Ukraine has already won, everyone in the world feels it. We also understand it. ...There will be some more difficult times, but Russia's loss is a done deal. They themselves are well aware of this."

Latvia's broadcast regulator has revoked the license for an independent Russian television channel based in the Baltic country.

The decision to cancel TV Rain's license was "due to threats to national security and public order,” Latvia's National Electronic Media Council said in a statement on its website. The decision will come into effect Thursday, NEPLP said. 

“We continue to work and consider all accusations against us to be unfair and absurd,” TV Rain said in a statement on Telegram.

As Russia’s only independent news network, TV Rain shuttered its Moscow operations in early March after the Russian government shut down its website, and it eventually set up in Latvia. Its journalists fled Russia, hoping to work in safety abroad. 

TV Rain said it will stop broadcasting on cable but remain on YouTube.

In response to the news, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, "It always seems to some people that somewhere is better than at home, there is freedom somewhere, but at home, there is no freedom. This is one of the clearest examples that demonstrates the falsity of such illusions."

Kira Yarmysh, press secretary of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, criticized the move: “Putin started the war. Dozhd channel [TV Rain] tells the truth about Putin and the war. Depriving Dozhd of its license helps Putin, and certainly not vice versa.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited wounded soldiers in the northeastern Kharkiv region on Tuesday to mark the country's Armed Forces Day.

Video released by his office showed the president presenting awards to combat medics and taking selfies with injured soldiers, as well as meeting medical staff. 

Later, he met wounded soldiers, thanking them "for the heroism with which you defend our state, its independence and territorial integrity, the freedom and life of our people. I wish you a speedy recovery."

Russia's Belgorod region — which borders northeastern Ukraine — is forming a militia, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Tuesday.

“Literally from the very first days of the start of the special military operation, a large number of residents of the Belgorod region appealed with the need to start preparing and forming territorial defense or self-defense units. We made this decision,” Gladkov said on his Telegram account.

According to the statement, the so-called territorial defense units are formed from those who "for health reasons or within the limits of age cannot be called up, but have combat experience and a great desire, if necessary, to defend their home." 

"Experienced instructors who have gone through a large number of wars and have combat experience are now conducting training and combat rallying of units on the territory of all border regions of the Belgorod region," Gladkov added.

Moscow’s accusation that Ukrainian drones struck two airbases deep inside Russia has once again raised the febrile question of escalation nine months into the war.

The strikes are an extraordinary breach of Russia’s assumptions that it can protect its deep interior, from which safe harbors its strategic bombers have caused carnage across Ukraine with relative impunity.

These are airbases very far inside Russia, and whatever the truth of the strikes – whether they represent a new long-distance drone capability Ukraine has advertised, or there’s another explanation – this is just not something that was meant to happen when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “10-day invasion” in February. Week by week, there are yet more signs that Moscow’s military machine cannot perform as advertised

The low-tech tools employed in this embarrassment pop the balloon of Russia’s peer status to NATO.

Russian humiliation is usually accompanied with concerns it may escalate the conflict. But it is hard to know what else Russia could do to Ukraine that it has not already done. It has leveled cities, hit civilian infrastructure callously and relentlessly when it can, killed thousands of civilians and yet more troops, and bombed maternity hospitals and shelters marked with the word “children.”

At some point, the labored assumption that Russia has magic, non-apocalyptic buttons left to press will begin to fade.

So what does Russia have left? Chemical weapons are a possibility, but likely have formed a part of the warnings it has received to not use nuclear force. Moscow’s choices appear limited to the more accurate or savage use of the same conventional brutality it is currently throwing at Ukraine’s cities almost daily.

This is the most damaging side effect of how public the exhaustion of Russia’s military has been: There is no real “fear factor” left. 

Read more here.

Hungary vetoed the European Union’s proposed nearly $19 billion 2023 aid package to Ukraine Tuesday, forcing the bloc to seek alternative solutions.

It marks the latest in long-running standoff, with Brussels withholding funds to Budapest amid a rule-of-law dispute.  

Hungarian Finance Minister Mihály Varga addressed his EU counterparts in a public session Tuesday in Brussels, where he announced “Hungary is not in favor of the amendment of the financial regulation,” referring to the support package proposed by the EU Commission in November. 

It comes as Brussels continues to withhold around $7.9 billion of Covid-19 recovery funds from Hungary as punishment for Budapest’s rule-of-law reforms restricting democratic freedoms. 

The local authorities in Russian-occupied Donetsk said a third day of shelling by Ukrainian forces has killed two people and injured 10.

The Territorial Defense Forces of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic said on Telegram that the shelling had struck a residential area of Donetsk city.

Unofficial Telegram channels claimed that a power substation near the city had been hit. And a series of photographs posted by the mayor of nearby Horlivka purported to show damage to the Stirol State Enterprise.

Alexei Kulemzin, head of the Russian-backed city administration, said there had been heavy shelling Tuesday from the Ukrainian-held village of Novomykhailivka.

The city of Donetsk fell to pro-Russian separatists in 2014, but Ukrainian forces remain within a few miles of its limits.

More “dangerous packages” have been sent to Ukrainian embassies in Romania and Denmark, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video press briefing on Tuesday. 

Kuleba discussed the "campaign of terror and intimidation" that began last Wednesday against Ukrainian embassies and consulates with "a package with explosives in Madrid," followed by "bloody letters with animal eyes in other capitals." 

“We have had new instances of dangerous packages sent to our embassies. Today, this was done to our embassy in Romania and the embassy of Ukraine in Denmark,” Kuleba said.

He did not specify whether these packages contained animal eyes like those that have been sent to Ukrainian diplomatic missions in other countries across Europe within the past week. 

“To all those who continue to send these packages and terrorize our embassies, I say please relax, don't waste your time and money for postage. You'll achieve nothing,” he added. 

This brings the total number of cases of threats to Ukrainian embassies and consulates abroad to 23 across 14 countries. 

On Monday, Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko said on Facebook that the total number of cases of threats to Ukrainian embassies and consulates was at 21 across 12 countries. This followed Spanish police seizing packages addressed to the Ukrainian embassies in Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga — all of which contained animal eyes — at a post office in Spain on Monday.