By This was CNBC’s live blog tracking developments on the war in Ukraine. See here for the latest updates.
Storms continue to batter Ukraine, Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea Monday, leaving three people dead and causing chaos on roads and widespread power cuts.
In other news, drone warfare between Russia and Ukraine intensified over the weekend, with both sides targeting each other’s capital cities with dozens of drones.
Russian authorities claimed Sunday that Ukraine had targeted Moscow with dozens of drones on Saturday night, just hours after Russia launched its most intense drone attack on Kyiv since the beginning of its full-scale war in 2022, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian air defenses brought down at least 24 drones over the Moscow region and four other provinces to the south and west, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Ukrainian officials have not commented on the strikes.
The alleged attacks came a day after Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with over 60 Iranian-made Shahed drones. The attack began hitting different districts of Kyiv in the early hours of the morning, with more waves coming as the sun came up, Reuters reported. The air raid warning lasted six hours.
In other news, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the model of globalization created by Western countries has outlived its usefulness.
Addressing an international forum Monday, Putin said “it is obvious that the model of globalization, which was formed largely by Western states — naturally, in their own interests — has outlived its usefulness and is in a deep crisis.”
Winter storms batter Russia and Ukraine, wreaking havoc, death and destruction … but war continues
Storms have brought flooding and heavy snowfall to parts of Ukraine, Russian-occupied Crimea and Russia in recent days. Multiple casualties as well as road and infrastructure chaos have been reported.
— Sophie Kiderlin
Wars tend to last longer than people expect, NATO’s secretary general told CNBC, warning that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had shown Moscow had no intentions of capitulating.
“What we have seen is that Russia is willing to put a lot of effort into this war. They’re ramping up [weapons] production and they’re also sacrificing soldiers in large numbers,” Jens Stoltenberg told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro in Brussels on Monday.
“We need to be prepared for the long haul,” he added. “Yes, it has a price, but the price of not supporting Ukraine is much higher than the price of supporting Ukraine.”
— Holly Ellyatt
NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNBC it would be a “tragedy” for Ukrainians if Russian President Vladimir Putin wins the war.
Victory would also send a dangerous message to other authoritarian leaders, he warned.
Speaking as NATO foreign ministers meet on Monday to discuss developments in the war and what further support Ukraine needs, Stoltenberg said it would “be a tragedy for Ukrainians if President Putin wins but also dangerous for us.”
“The message sent to authoritarian leaders, in Moscow but also in Beijing, would be that when they use military force and invade another country, they get what they want. Therefore we will be more vulnerable if President Putin wins so it’s in our security interests to support Ukraine,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro in Brussels.
Concerns have grown recently that public support for continued military funding for Ukraine has declined. Political shifts in Europe have also heralded new leadership in a number of countries that is more skeptical about continued support for Kyiv.
Stoltenberg said bipartisan support for Ukraine remained strong in the U.S., despite some rumblings of Republican discontent over military aid. The U.S. has committed around $44.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked invasion in February 2022.
“I’m absolutely confident that the United States understands that it’s dangerous for the United States if President Putin wins in Ukraine,” he said.
— Holly Ellyatt
Fierce storms killed three people on the Russian and Crimean Black Sea coast on Monday, with hundreds evacuated.
State news agency TASS reported that one person had been killed in the resort city of Sochi, another on the Russian-held Crimean peninsula, and a third person onboard a vessel in the Kerch Strait, which separates Crimea from the Russian mainland.
Storms have been raging in the Black Sea since Friday.
Video published online showed large waves sweeping over the seafront in Sochi, and carrying away cars. In the Crimean town of Yevpatoriya, streets were flooded.
The Russian-installed governors of Crimea and Sevastopol, both of which Moscow seized and unilaterally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, declared states of emergency.
Russia’s emergency services ministry said it had evacuated more than 350 people. And the Energy Ministry said bad weather had left about 1.9 million people without electricity on Monday morning in the southern Russian regions of Dagestan, Krasnodar and Rostov, as well as Crimea and the regions of Ukraine that Russia unilaterally said it had annexed last year.
In the Russian port of Novorossiysk, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and Russia’s Transneft state oil pipeline company announced a halt to loadings due to weather conditions.
— Reuters
Heavy snowstorms continue to rage across Ukraine, with the southern port of Odesa seeing some of the most extreme weather and 1.5 meters of snow.
The Kyiv-Odesa highway is closed, a 100-meter-long pipe of a boiler-house collapsed in the city and 71 car accidents took place in the region over the past 24 hours, NBC News reported.
Over the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported the following:
— Holly Ellyatt
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said the high, daily number of Russian casualties that Ukraine has claimed to have inflicted on Russian forces recently is “plausible.”
“The last six weeks have likely seen some of the highest Russian casualty rates of the war so far. The heavy losses have largely been caused by Russia’s offensive against the Donbas town of Avdiivka,” the defense ministry said.
Ukraine’s General Staff reported throughout November that Russian casualties were running at a daily average of 931 per day, the ministry noted in its latest intelligence assessment on Monday.
“Previously, the deadliest reported month for Russia was March 2023 with an average of 776 losses per day, at the height of Russia’s assault on Bakhmut,” the ministry said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Although Defence Intelligence cannot verify the methodology, taken as a total including both killed and wounded, the figures are plausible,” it said.
Both Russia and Ukraine are highly secretive about their own losses while both routinely claim to have inflicted high losses on each other. The chaotic nature of war and accounting for the dead and injured, as well as attempts at propaganda and disinformation, makes it impossible to reach an accurate figure of the true losses experienced by both sides.
— Holly Ellyatt
Severe weather in Ukraine has made conditions “extremely difficult” in a large part of of the country, with snowstorms causing widespread power cuts.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said Sunday that 386 settlements in 10 regions were disrupted by extreme weather conditions, including snowstorms that trapped motorists, cars and trucks and brought down trees on major roads.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday evening that “weather conditions are extremely difficult in a large part of our country” and that southern regions were experiencing considerable problems, Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
“I ask all citizens of Ukraine in areas where bad weather prevails: please be as careful as possible … As soon as possible, our power engineers will restore electricity supply to all cities and villages that are currently experiencing a temporary blackout due to bad weather,” he said.
Poor weather is already affecting conditions on the battlefield but fighting remains intense, Zelenskyy said.
“Intense fighting does not stop for a single hour in the Donetsk directions, in the Kharkiv region – the Kupyansk direction. Our soldiers are also holding positions in the south of the country: this is the Zaporizhzhia region, this is our Kherson region,” he said.
— Holly Ellyatt
The model of globalization created by Western countries has outlived its usefulness, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday
“It is obvious that the model of globalization, which was formed largely by Western states — naturally, in their own interests — has outlived its usefulness and is in a deep crisis,” Putin said in a message to participants of the Primakov Readings, an international forum taking place in Moscow on Monday.
“A well-known group of countries, accustomed to dominating the world, stops at nothing to maintain their waning influence and practices outright blackmail and forceful pressure,” Putin added, in comments reported by news agency Interfax.
“Such a destabilizing line provoked both the crisis situation around Ukraine and the tragic escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” he said.
Russia has blamed the West for the war in Ukraine, despite Russia’s invasion in 2022, and for creating the conditions for the war between Israel and Hamas.
— Holly Ellyatt
Russian authorities on Sunday claimed that Ukraine tried to attack Moscow with dozens of drones overnight, just a day after Russia launched its most intense drone attack on Kyiv since the beginning of its full-scale war in 2022, according to Ukrainian officials.
Russian air defenses brought down at least 24 drones over the Moscow region — which surrounds but does not include the capital — and four other provinces to the south and west, the Russian Defense Ministry and Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported in a series of Telegram updates. Neither referenced any casualties.
Andrei Vorobyev, governor of the Moscow region, wrote on Telegram that the drone strikes damaged three unspecified buildings there, adding that no one was hurt.
Ukrainian officials did not acknowledge or comment on the strikes, which came a day after Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital with over 60 Iranian-made Shahed drones.
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— Reuters
