Russia-Ukraine war updates: Ukraine asks residents to leave northern border

This live page is now closed.

Read here about efforts by some EU nations to ensure that Ukraine will remain capable of resisting Russia this year.

Follow along with our coverage of the war in Ukraine here.

We will soon be closing this live page.

Here’s a recap of the day’s main developments:

• After the destruction of the Russian A50 long-range radar detection aircraft on Sunday, Russia will probably be forced to reconsider limiting the areas of operation of its aircraft, according to a British intelligence report.
• Western companies supplied Russia with $2.9bn worth of components that can be used for military production in the first 10 months of 2023 despite sanctions on Moscow, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office.
• Russia says its forces carried out a precision strike in Ukraine’s Kharkiv on Tuesday on a building housing “foreign fighters”, mostly French mercenaries, killing more than 60 people.
• A woman was killed and two children injured after a Russian air raid hit the village of Maly Burluk in the Kupiansk district, Kharkiv region, according to local police.

Russia has said its forces had carried out a precision strike a day earlier on a building housing “foreign fighters” in Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv.

The defence ministry said the fighters were mostly French mercenaries and the building was destroyed on Tuesday, with more than 60 people killed. It did not provide evidence.

Local officials in Kharkiv said two Russian missiles hit a residential area in the centre of the city on Tuesday, injuring 17 people, two of them seriously, and badly damaging homes.

Two Ukrainian radar stations, a fuel depot and three ammunition depots were struck by Russian forces today, according to Russia’s Defence Ministry.

It also said the Russian forces attacked a temporary deployment point of foreign fighters in Ukraine as well as “103 artillery units in firing positions, manpower and military equipment in 119 areas”.

Al Jazeera’s Mindset meets the Ukrainian therapists fighting to keep a population sane in a country at war.

A woman was killed and two children injured after a Russian air raid hit the village of Maly Burluk in the Kupiansk district, Kharkiv region, according to local police.

“A guided bomb was dropped on the village council building in Maly Burluk. Two children were injured. Sasha, 10, who lost his leg, and Alina, 13, who sustained shrapnel injuries, are in the hospital. During the examination of the attack scene, the police found the body of a woman. She is being identified,” the police said.

A criminal case has been launched under Article 438 (violation of laws and rules of war) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, it added.

Poland Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says the government is looking into how it can make more ammunition and military equipment as it works on a new aid package for Ukraine.

Warsaw has been a close ally of Kyiv during Russia’s war in Ukraine, but relations were dealt a blow last year by a dispute over grain imports and a blockade of some border crossings by Polish truckers demanding that the European Union reinstate a permit system for Ukrainian hauliers.

Sikorski signalled his intention to put ties back on a stronger footing by visiting Ukraine last month, shortly after his appointment to the new Western-looking government, and the new government has announced a new aid package for Kyiv.

“We are looking at all issues to do with Ukraine with fresh eyes,” Sikorski told Reuters news agency in an interview at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

“We’re examining what options we have of making more ammunition and equipment and also what we still have in our stores.”

Russia is developing its relations with North Korea in all areas, including “sensitive” ones, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The remarks came after North Korea’s foreign minister held rare talks in the Kremlin with President Vladimir Putin, who has been invited by leader Kim Jong Un to visit the reclusive nuclear-armed country.

“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is our very important partner, and we are focused on the further development of our relations in all areas, including in sensitive areas,” Peskov told reporters.

Putin has deepened ties with North Korea since sending troops into Ukraine in 2022, and the United States and its allies have condemned what they say have been significant North Korean missile deliveries to Russia to help its war effort.

An elderly couple in their 60s and a 54-year-old man have been injured in the Kherson town of Berislav after a Russian air raid, according to the chairman of the Kherson regional state administration, Alexander Prokudin.

The film crew of the Radio Liberty project Crimea.Realii came under artillery fire while filming a television story in southern Ukraine, according to the media outlet based in Czech Republic.

Shrapnel injured journalist Dmitry Evchin’s leg near the village of Robotyne, Zaporozhia region.

The Ukrainian military provided him with first aid and evacuated him to a neighbouring village, and then transported him to a hospital in Zaporozhia.

According to doctors, his operation was successful and Evchin will remain in intensive care for now.

Western companies supplied Russia with $2.9bn worth of components that can be used for military production in the first 10 months of 2023 despite sanctions on Moscow, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office.

Russia’s 2023 imports of military goods totalled 90 percent of the levels that were registered before the full-scale invasion in February, 2022, it added.

The office cited research by a working group run by Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Moscow. The research focused on Russian attempts to circumvent export control sanctions on military goods.

“The products of more than 250 Western companies were found in samples of destroyed or captured Russian weapons,” Zelenskyy’s office said.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has appealed for US lawmakers to approve new assistance to Ukraine, saying it would serve US interests not to “appease” Russia.

President Joe Biden’s administration at the end of 2023 allocated a last batch of military aid to Ukraine as it struggles to persuade legislators of the rival Republican Party to approve some $61bn in new funding.

“Fundamentally, there is a majority of Congress in support. We just need to find it,” Cameron told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The former Conservative prime minister said that Ukraine’s war affects Europe but is “about American security, too”.

“History demonstrates to us that if you appease an aggressor in Europe, the aggressor comes back for more,” he said.

Over the past few days, we’ve published several pieces covering various aspects of the conflict.

Here are a few highlights:

Wider context: Russia doubles down on fast, cheap, unguided bombs to attack Ukraine

Photo gallery: Wave of Russian missiles pounds areas across Ukraine

News: At least 17 injured after Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s Kharkiv

Opinion: It is time to use Russia’s frozen assets to help Ukraine

And there’s plenty more here.

Russian police have cracked down on a large protest in the far eastern region of Bashkortostan after an activist was jailed.

The protest broke out after a court in the town of Baymak sentenced Indigenous rights activist Fail Alsynov to four years in a penal colony.

His supporters, estimated by some to number up to 3,000, gathered in protest, which would make it one of the largest demonstrations in Russia since the start of its war against Ukraine.

Large protests are rare in Russia due to the risks of arrests. Thousands of people have been detained in the past two years for opposing the war.

Read more about the protest here.

Ukraine has lost up to 25 military personnel in the Kherson area in one day as well as two Gvozdika self-propelled artillery units, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence.

“In the Kherson direction, as a result of fire damage to units of the 35th and 37th Marine Brigades in the areas of the settlements of Tyaginki and Ivanovka, Kherson region, the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces amounted to up to 25 military personnel, 3 vehicles, as well as 2 Gvozdika self-propelled artillery units,” it said in a statement.

The signing of a security agreement between Ukraine and the UK shows that Ukraine is literally left with no chance to get out of the conflict through negotiations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said.

Speaking during a news conference, she added that Ukraine was being made “a bargaining chip in the adventures of the Anglo-Saxons and keeping it on the current Euro-Atlantic and anti-Russian confrontational course”.

Ukraine’s air force has shelled the outskirts of the village of Repyakhovka, Belgorod region, damaging a power line and leaving the village residents without electricity, according to regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

“There were no casualties. There was damage to the power line, and subscribers in the village of Repyakhovka were cut off,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

A Ukrainian Kamikaze drone that fell in the village of Sverdlikovo, Kursk region, damaged a residential building, according to Roman Starovoyt, the governor of the region.

“None of the residents were injured,” he wrote in his Telegram channel, adding that the facade of a residential building was damaged by shrapnel, windows were broken, and a car was damaged near it.

Regional authorities will provide residents with the necessary assistance with repairs, he said.

British International Investment, the UK’s government-backed development finance institution, “will invest $25m to unlock Ukrainian exports and imports, including vital food supplies”, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has announced on X.

“The UK is helping to protect the long-term future of Ukraine,” the announcement said .

The UK is helping safeguard Ukraine’s long-term future.@BritishIntInv will invest $25 million to unlock Ukrainian exports and imports, including vital food supplies.

We #StandWithUkraine 🇬🇧🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/46GFvT7DZP

— Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) January 17, 2024

After the destruction of the Russian A50 long-range radar detection aircraft on Sunday, Russia will probably be forced to reconsider limiting the areas of operation of its aircraft, according to a British intelligence report.

The UK’s Defence Ministry said on X that “the A-50 is critical to the Russian air surveillance picture over the battle space”.

At the same time, the Russian Air Force has eight A-50 aircraft, which can probably cover the consequences of the loss of the board, “however the increased stress on the remaining airframes coupled with the loss of the crew will likely constrain longer term mission sustainability”.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 17 January 2024.

Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/0npPvd2nrM #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/tHDMvqC5Yp

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) January 17, 2024