More than 1,000 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war isn’t coming anywhere close to an endpoint. On the contrary, last week’s events included targeted damage towards the Portuguese embassy in Kyiv, which was vividly condemned on social media.
The Embassy of Portugal wasn’t the only attacked entity the week preceding Christmas. As Russian missiles targeted Kyiv, the Church of St. Nicholas was damaged. It is the second-oldest Catholic Church in the Ukrainian capital, and one that survived World War II. This comes only one day after Vladimir Putin’s annual report, presented live on Russian TV. He didn’t fail to surprise, claiming that “everyone wants action”, while also refuting the claims concerning a crashing Russian economy. According to Mr Putin, his country’s economy has been growing steadily, while “other economies like Germany are stagnating.” He also developed the “Oreshnik”, Russia’s latest missile. He called it an experiment, saying it would be “interesting”. Ukrainian president Volodymiy Zelenskyy reacted on Twitter, calling Putin a “dumbass”.
A journalist asked whether the war would soon end. Putin calmly answered they weren’t “taking land by 100, 200 or 300 meters”, but instead were now taking “square kilometres”. About 10,000 North Korean soldiers arrived by late October, with Russians struggling to mobilise. The troops were mostly deployed in Kursk, a Russian region which suffered Ukrainian advances. Ukrainian Intelligence Agency GUR confirmed that North Koreans suffered casualties in Ukrainian counter-attacks, many of which are said to have no combat experience. President Volodymir Zelenskyy confirmed the GUR are trying to establish how many of the casualties on Russia’s side were North Korean.
While the spotlight lies on Kyiv, Dnipro, and Kharkiv, other cities have become ghost towns since the beginning of the war. Olek, a Dnipro-born student living in Nikopol tells his story of how this town evolved through the years of the war: “When the war started, I was prepared to evacuate…but I didn’t think anyone cared for our city, or that the Russians were even interested in Nikopol”. In 2022, the city still had about 100,000 inhabitants, located in South-East Ukraine. Five months into the war, the unthinkable happened: “On July 12th 2022, which is considered a holiday in our family, our city was shelled for the first time”. The Russians entered in spring Enerhodar, a city located just opposite of Nikopol by the River Dnepr. Olek recalls his worries: “They entered the plant, and we were worried something similar to Chernobyl might happen”.
He says he could see the Russians shelling Nikopol from the other side of the river, using the plant as a shield. Artillery strikes became a normality, occurring several times per day. Additionally, he says Russia started using drones in 2023. He says the river was the only thing preventing Nikopol from being the frontline. Most people could flee, but with Olek’s family forming part of the city council, he couldn’t. By now, Nikopol has only about 10,000 inhabitants according to his estimates.
While Russian forces tried to raze cities to the ground like Bucha or Mariupol, this wasn’t the case for Nikopol. Instead, they use the surroundings as a testing ground for new artillery, especially for recruits. Olek says the timing coincides with the arrival of North Korean troops. Nikopol’s story is untold to the international audience, with Ukrainians forbidding the international press to step in. Even Western Ukrainians are largely unaware, as Nikopol is rarely mentioned. Eastern Ukrainians, on the other hand, do know about it: and it’s nobody else. I asked Olek why that was, a question he couldn’t answer.
Isolated cities like Nikopol have a hard time, not only because they do not exist in the outer world, but because of the humanitarian situation. A local reservoir was gone by 2023; the so-called Kakhovka Reservoir. Nikopol endured a harsh summer that year, without any water. The city depended on rainfall and on a little humanitarian aid. However, in both cases, this water isn’t drinkable, as it isn’t purified. The humanitarian aid came from Dnipro-based charities, but this was once again not mentioned in the media.
In the developments of last week, the Russian Chemical Weapons Chief Igor Kirillov was killed in Moscow, one day after the Ukrainian Security Service SBU set him on the war criminals list. Russian sources claim he died as he stepped on an explosive scooter. Igor Kirillov is well known in the UK, as the Foreign Office described his actions during wartime as “barbaric”, having used chemical weapons at the front. He also famously said he wanted to “develop a dirty bomb” to be deployed in Ukraine. This is seen as a major blow for Russians, given that this happened in Moscow itself.
Ukraine also announced on Friday that it will block the gas streamline connecting Russia to Europe through Ukraine, starting from Jan 7th, 2025. Countries like Slovakia, which depend on this pipeline, have expressed discontent, as Slovakian PM Robert Fico visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sunday. Hungary, another country dependent on Russian gas, is looking for solutions with the “Southern Stream”, which connects Russian gas to Europe through Turkey and Bulgaria. Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán visited Bulgarian President Rumen Radev in attempt to strike a deal for Lukoil refinery, which has been at the centre of controversies for the EU, given that it has helped Russia circumvent EU sanctions since 2022.
