December 15, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

Any shipment of US Patriot missiles to Ukraine could "lead to unpredictable consequences" and threaten global security, the Russian Embassy in Washington said in a statement Wednesday. 

The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the advanced long-range air defense system to Ukraine to help counter Moscow's attacks, according to US officials cited in a CNN report Tuesday.

It added that continued arms deliveries to Ukraine "will only strengthen the Zelensky regime’s sense of impunity and push it to new crimes against civilians" in four Ukrainian regions that Russia claims to have annexed.

The statement also criticized US support for Ukraine, saying: "Washington’s strategy causes enormous damage not only to the Russian-American relations, but also creates additional risks for global security."

Speaking earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that any Patriot missiles sent to Ukraine would be legitimate targets for Russian forces, but added that the US plan had not been confirmed.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday that Washington’s potential delivery would increase the risk of the US military’s direct involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, according to state news agency TASS. 

"On December 13, the US announced its intention to supply Ukraine with a Patriot air defense missile battery. Earlier, many experts, including those overseas, questioned the rationality of such a step which would lead to an escalation of the conflict and increase the risk of directly dragging the US army into combat," Zakharova said at a briefing in Moscow. 

"We would like to reiterate that all arms supplied to Ukraine by the West are legitimate military targets for Russia’s Armed Forces and will be either eliminated or captured as our country has repeatedly stated," she said. 

"Washington continues to strong-arm other NATO countries demanding from them a more substantial contribution to the militarization of Ukraine," Zakharova said. 

In a further sign of the importance it attaches to its strategic nuclear deterrent, the Russian military has loaded a "Yars" ballistic missile into a silo launcher in the Kaluga region.

The Ministry of Defense released video to mark the event, just ahead of Russia's "Day of Strategic Missile Forces."

It said that an "intercontinental ballistic missile of the Yars complex was loaded into a silo launcher at the Kozelsky missile formation in the Kaluga region."

Patriot defense system: The announcement of Russia's intercontinental missile installation comes after reports that the Biden administration is finalizing plans to send an advanced long-range air defense system to Ukraine to help counter Moscow's attacks.

An 8-year old boy was among two people killed by Russian shelling of the city of Kherson on Wednesday, according to Ukrainian officials.

Yaroslav Yanushevych, head of the Kherson regional military administration, said Russian shells had hit residential buildings in the Dniprovskyi district of the city, which was liberated by Ukrainian forces last month.

Two others were wounded, he said.

Kherson attacks: Russian strikes also hit the regional administration building in Kherson on Wednesday morning, amid a wave of fatal shelling on the southern Ukrainian region.

On Tuesday, Kherson was shelled 42 times, according to Yanushevych. The targets included a yacht club, a college, a school and residential buildings. One person was killed and one was injured.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said Wednesday it had carried out searches of premises belonging to a branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in nine regions — finding Russian passports, propagandist literature and "passes of the occupiers."

Part of the church in Ukraine — which split earlier this year — remains loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate (MP). 

It said it found Russian passports, St. George's ribbons — which are popular among pro-Russian separatists — symbols of the banned pro-Russian party "Opposition Platform For Life" and "manuals for spreading enemy propaganda through the faithful" on the territory of the dioceses.

In addition, intelligence officers found books by Ivan Ilyin, who is often called "Putin's philosopher," it said.

In the village of Chornobaivka in Kherson region, the SBU said it had discovered passes of the pro-Russian occupiers during the inspection of the church premises.

It said photographs of Russian documents "on ensuring cooperation with the military commissariats of the Russian Federation" were found in the diocese of the Lviv region.

The SBU also said it had found a monk with a Russian passport and contacts in the Russian Federation on the territory of one of the monasteries of the Rivne region in western Ukraine.

The Lviv diocese said in a statement on Facebook that the SBU had inspected premises and that "no anti-Ukrainian items and literature were found."

The SBU has stepped up a campaign of raids against parts of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in recent weeks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that if US Patriot missiles are sent to Ukraine, they would be legitimate targets for Russian forces.

But he added that the US plan had not been confirmed.

Peskov was asked by CNN if he held the same view as former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who has said that the missiles "would immediately become a legitimate target of our armed forces."

CNN reported exclusively Tuesday that the Biden administration is finalizing plans to send the Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine, with a decision possibly 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 told CNN.

Russian officials have repeatedly said that all Western systems sent to Ukraine — including the HIMARS anti-air defenses — will be targeted.

Ukrainian authorities have been seeking Patriot batteries for months but have not confirmed that the US has agreed to dispatch them. On Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said only that a meeting of the military's General Staff had talked about the "protection of the sky."

CNN's Barbara Starr contributed reporting to this post.

Russian oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin has made a series of claims about the brutal murder of a former member of his Wagner company who had defected to Ukraine — alleging without evidence that US intelligence services killed the man. 

Prigozhin, a long-time associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and founder of the private military contractor Wagner, said he would ask Russian authorities "to establish the facts and circumstances of the murder of Yevgeny Anatolyevich Nuzhin."

In November a video emerged of Nuzhin, who had crossed to the Ukrainian side, being brutally murdered with a sledgehammer after claiming that he had been abducted in Kyiv. 

It's a puzzling about-turn for the oligarch: In November, he applauded the murder of Nuzhin, saying he had "betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, betrayed them consciously. He was not taken prisoner, nor did he surrender. Rather, he planned his escape. Nuzhin is a traitor.”

Before his alleged abduction, Nuzhin told Ukrainian interviewers that he had planned his escape from Russian-held territory and was ready to fight on the Ukrainian side.

Prigozhin now contends that Wagner fighters could not possibly have abducted Nuzhin and brought him back across the front line without being caught but claims that US intelligence services “abduct people throughout the entire world.”

Ukrainian officials say Nuzhin was returned to Russia of his own volition. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said last month that Nuzhin had chosen to return to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange and had gone through "an official prisoner-of-war exchange procedure."

Ukraine's state energy supplier said none of its power infrastructure in Kyiv was damaged on Wednesday morning, following a wave of drone attacks across the city.

The company also gave a brief update on the energy supply situation nationwide.

In the east of the country repairs are slow and getting more dangerous to undertake “due to almost daily shelling," it said.

"Energy facilities are constantly damaged. Repair works are slowing down due to the danger to the lives of repairmen."

Russia has unleashed a barrage of strikes targeting critical infrastructure in Ukraine in recent months, leaving millions of residents without access to heat and electricity amid a harsh winter season.

Ukrainian officials traveled to the United States last week to push for support for the creation of a special tribunal to prosecute top-level Russian officials for the crime of aggression.

Although there are a number of different bodies working towards accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Ukrainian Ambassador at Large Anton Korynevych argued that these existing mechanisms do not do enough to ensure that the decision-makers in Moscow face punishment for their war against Ukraine.

The idea of such a tribunal has been backed by a number of European countries and the European Union. It has faced pushback from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is carrying out its own investigation into reported war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out in Ukraine. Korynevych said that the ICC does not have the jurisdiction to prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine.

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