‘Attempts to Appease and Engage the Aggressor’ – Ukraine at War Update for Jan. 9

The death toll from Russia’s air strike on Zaporizhzhia stood at 13 civilians on Wednesday, with Ukrainian officials calling it one of the deadliest air attacks for weeks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attacks and renewed calls for the world to rally around Ukraine and bring about a “lasting peace.”

“There is nothing more cruel than launching aerial bombs on a city, knowing that ordinary civilians will suffer,” Zelensky wrote. “This again demonstrates what Russia really wants. They want only war and only victims.”

A video posted to the president’s social media pages showed casualties lying on the streets, covered with debris. The guided-bomb attack wounded at least 30 other people, regional governor Ivan Federov said.

AFP reported that four people in the regional capital were trapped under the debris of a house that was hit by shelling. Two were pulled from the rubble, while the other two were found dead, the French news agency quoted the governor as saying.

“The Russians conducted two strikes with guided aerial bombs on the city of Zaporizhzhia. They exploded among crowds of people,” an Interior Ministry statement said.

A separate Russian strike the same day killed two people in the village of Stepnogirsk, about 30 kilometers south of Zaporizhzhia, parts of which Moscow claims to have annexed in 2022.

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The governor of the Saratov region, Roman Busagrin, reported on social media that a large fire was spreading at an “industrial enterprise that was attacked by drones” and called for a state of emergency. He said that two firefighters were killed in the blaze.

“History proves that it is always the people who pay for the historic mistakes of politicians,” says Ukrainian Embassy in Bratislava

The Ukrainian Embassy in Slovakia has expressed outrage that a delegation of Slovakian parliamentarians intends again to visit Russia, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing the embassy in Bratislava.

Wednesday’s announcement that a group of far-right Slovakian representatives, led by deputy speaker and leader of the nationalist SNS party Andrej Danko, intends to meet with leadership in the Kremlin comes just a few weeks after Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, controversially met with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin just before the holidays.

“The embassy and the Ukrainian side strongly protest these intentions and once again call for there to be no contact with the criminal regime in Moscow, as such steps contribute to the legitimization of Russian aggression against Ukraine,” Kyiv’s mission in Bratislava wrote, calling on the politicians to abandon their “attempts to appease and engage with the aggressor to serve their own political and mercantile interests.”

Fico recently railed against the joint decision of Kyiv and Moscow to discontinue the transit of natural gas via Ukraine, which went into effect at the beginning of this year. The stated goal of Fico’s December 2024 meeting with Putin was to secure energy solutions for his country during the impending, indefinite shutdown.

Meanwhile, the leadership of the European Union, of which Slovakia has been a part since 2009, has insisted that its members have enough reserves and alternative providers and that the new lack of Russian fuel is a non-issue.

The Ukrainian diplomats added on Wednesday that, since the 2023 parliamentary elections in that country, Slovakian officials have “not once condemned the brutal crimes of the Russian Federation officially, frankly and publically.”

“History proves that it is always the people who pay for the historic mistakes of politicians. And the Slovak nation is no exception, as in the first half of the 20th century it became a hostage to the shortsightedness and unscrupulousness of its leaders, which led to well-known tragic consequences,” the diplomats wrote.

Breakaway Moldovan region warns it has only a few weeks before it runs out of energy

While instructing residents to “dress warmly, gather into a single room and seal windows with blankets,” the Moldovan breakaway district of Transnistria will run out of gas used for limited cooking and heating in less than a month, authorities warned Wednesday, AFP reported, at least partly due to the shutoff of Russian fuel supplies this year.

The breakaway region, once closely aligned with Moscow but since has been looking Westward for its future, has been unable to provide heating and hot water to residents, as the Kremlin claims it was not only the expired contract with Kyiv that precipitated this situation, but also that the government in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau had not been paying its bills.

“The country is not only in a state of energy crisis, but also a humanitarian one,” Transnistria’s deputy prime minister, Sergei Obolonik, said. “The 13 million cubic meters of gas in reserve make it possible to supply a number of social facilities and other vital infrastructure, as well as residential multi-story buildings for cooking... The resource will be enough for another 24 days from today.”

With temperatures hitting freezing, people have been forced to rely on wood stoves and/or electric heaters, AFP reported, noting that Transnistria is now importing its power from Romania.