31 January 2024

January 2024 in brief

January opened with a large Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv and Kharkiv that local officials said killed six people, and a second mass missile attack later in the month killed at least 12 and injured more than 80 nationwide, according to the Kyiv Independent. ^[1][2] Donetsk Oblast Governor Vadym Filashkin said Russian S-300 missiles killed 11 people in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, five of them children, and the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission reported 90 civilians killed and 421 injured in figures dated 3 January. ^[1][2][3] In Russian-held Donetsk, the Russian-installed official Denis Pushilin said shelling of a market killed at least 27 people and blamed Ukraine, which said it carried out no operations there; AFP could not verify the circumstances. ^[1] Russia said a military transport that crashed in Belgorod region carried 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war and that Ukraine shot it down, a claim Putin repeated, while Ukrainian officials disputed that prisoners were aboard and the UN said it could not verify the reports. ^[1] The two sides still carried out two prisoner exchanges mediated by the United Arab Emirates, the first of which Ukrainian officials called the largest since the full-scale invasion, with 230 Ukrainians returned. ^[1][2] Ukrainian officials said their forces downed a Russian A-50 radar plane over the Sea of Azov, and drone attacks reached oil and gas terminals near St Petersburg and at Ust-Luga, which anonymous Ukrainian sources described as Ukrainian operations. ^[1][2] The UK signed a security cooperation agreement with Ukraine and pledged 2.5 billion pounds in military aid for 2024-25, the first of a series of such bilateral agreements. ^[1]

Written from the records it cites; every figure appears in a cited record.