WAR IN UKRAINE: December 14, 2022
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 294
There’s been another Russian kamikaze drone attack on Kyiv this morning. In all, four residential buildings have suffered minor damage; another administrative building was hit by drone fragments. People were not injured - Kyiv City Military Administration. The Iranian -made drones were reportedly launched from Azov Sea coast. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said anti-aircraft defenses shot down 13 of the 13 drones that attacked.
The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine that could be announced as soon as this week, according to two US officials and a senior administration official. The Pentagon’s plan still needs to be approved by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before it is sent to President Joe Biden for his signature. The three officials told CNN that approval is expected. It is not clear how many missile launchers will be sent but a typical Patriot battery includes a radar set that detects and tracks targets, computers, power generating equipment, an engagement control station and up to eight launchers, each holding four ready to fire missiles. Once the plans are finalized, the Patriots are expected to ship quickly in the coming days and Ukrainians will be trained to use them at a US Army base in Grafenwoehr, Germany, officials said. The system is widely considered one of the most capable long-range weapons to defend airspace against incoming ballistic and cruise missiles as well as some aircraft. Because of its long-range and high-altitude capability, it can potentially shoot down Russian missiles and aircraft far from their intended targets inside Ukraine - CNN. Read the full CNN report here
Russia on Tuesday dismissed a peace proposal from Zelenskyy that would involve a pullout of Russian troops and demanded Kyiv accept new territorial "realities" that included Russia's addition of four Ukrainian regions as its "new subjects."
The UK has introduced new sanctions against Russia, targeting 12 Russian senior military commanders — ten generals and two colonels — the UK government says. London also unveiled sanctions against three Iranian businessmen and officials, as well as an Iranian UAV components manufacturing company.
The World Bank estimates that the reconstruction of Ukraine’s damaged infrastructure will cost over 500 billion dollars. “The humanitarian consequences of the war are catastrophic”, declared the vice-president of the World Bank, Anna Bjerde, speaking to the Austrian newspaper Die Press. “Without infrastructure, there is no economy, the Ukrainian state has no tax revenue.” Eight million people will be living in poverty in Ukraine by the end of 2022, she added. “The will raise the poverty level level from 2 to 25% of the population.”
Poll: Most Ukrainians will donate part of their New Year’s budget to army, charity. More than 60% of Ukrainians plan to spend at least part of their budget for New Year’s and Christmas shopping to help the Armed Forces or those affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion, according to a Deloitte survey - Kyiv Independent
In February, according to the last official estimate just before the invasion, there were 37.5m people living in government-controlled Ukraine. Ukrainian demographic statistics were patchy and imprecise even before the invasion. Now, if there are new figures, they have been declared secret for the duration of the war. What is not secret, though, is that for years Ukraine has been one of the fastest-shrinking countries in the world; and the war is, of course, accelerating its decline - Economist
Humanitarian actors, which are used to operating in failed states, arrived in Ukraine with badly adjusted methods and were technologically outperformed by the Ukrainians, AFP reports: At the start of the conflict”, said Francois Grunewald, head of an independent institute specialising in humanitarian practices, “they had to confront the very different dynamics of Ukrainian civil society, which is highly digitalised.” Ukrainian civil society groups quickly organised themselves on Facebook and Telegram. “We had two disconnected groups that took a lot of time to begin coordinating with each other,” he said.
Required reading…
Vladimir Putin: 2022 Loser of the Year
For the first time since the event was launched a decade ago, Vladimir Putin will not hold his flagship end-of-year press marathon this month. The surprise cancellation is the latest indication that all is not well in the Kremlin. For the past ten years, Putin’s annual press marathon has been a carefully curated propaganda spectacle allowing the Russian dictator to demonstrate his mastery of world affairs. However, with his invasion of Ukraine unraveling amid unprecedented losses and mounting military defeats, Putin is clearly in no mood to face even the most docile of audiences.
While Putin hides from the cameras, his arch-rival is ending the year on a wave of international acclaim. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already been named Person of the Year by an ever-expanding list of media outlets including TIME magazine and the Financial Times newspaper, and is now being routinely touted as one of the world’s most influential politicians. Zelenskyy’s rising profile is recognition of his wartime leadership and also reflects global admiration for Ukraine’s courageous resistance to the Russian invasion.
Read the full Atlantic Council Ukraine Alert analysis by Peter Dickinson here