Ukraine updates: ICJ rules case against Russia can proceed

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu believes the Russian army is on the offensive in Ukraine and even claimed territorial gains in a discussion with senior officers.

"Our units are advancing, expanding the zone under their control, and improving their position on the front line," he said at a meeting in Moscow.

"After the failure of [Ukraine's] counteroffensive [in summer 2023], the Russian armed forces have the strategic initiative on the entire front line."

He claimed that the Russian army had captured the villages of Tabayivka and Krokhmalne in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv and the village of Vesele near Bakhmut in the Donbas region.

However, the precise combat situation in these villages with only a few houses is not entirely clear and his claims have not been independently verified.

A Ukrainian military spokesperson in Kyiv said on Friday that Tabayivka is heavily contested but remains in Ukrainian hands, specifying only that "there are artillery duels."

A senior official in Ukraine's Defense Ministry has been suspended as an investigation into suspected corruption in the procurement of weapons continues, the ministry said.

Toomas Nakhkur, who led the ministry's department for technical policy and weapons development, was suspended after being named an official suspect in an unspecified criminal case.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said last week it had uncovered a scheme by current and former officials as well as businessmen to embezzle around $40 million (€37 million) by securing advance payment for artillery shells that were never provided.

The SBU did not name the suspects, but Ukrainian media identified Nakhkur as one of them.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov took office last year pledging to clean up graft inside the ministry as Ukraine's Western partners deliberated sending more military aid to Kyiv following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

Umerov's predecessor was dismissed in September following several corruption scandals.

The United Nations' top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) reached a preliminary conclusion on Friday that it does have the jurisdiction to open proceedings in a case brought against Russia by Ukraine.

Ukraine sued its neighbor shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, citing Moscow's invocation of the Genocide Convention to justify its assault.

Russia had initially justified its invasion by claiming that it was acting to prevent "genocide" against Russians and Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. With this false accusation, Ukraine argues, Moscow is abusing the Genocide Convention.

Kyiv, which is not accusing Moscow of committing genocide itself in Ukraine, is supported in its action by 32 Western allies. Russia firmly rejects the accusations and has requested that the case be dismissed.

In a preliminary ruling in March 2022, the ICJ sided with Ukraine and ordered Russia to halt its invasion immediately. But Russia objected to this judgement, saying the ICJ, which decides on disputes between states, had no legal right to decide in this case, and pressed on with its invasion.

Earlier this week, in a separate case brought by Kyiv back in 2017, the ICJ acquitted Russia of "financing terrorism" in eastern Ukraine.

Decisions by the ICJ are binding, but the court has no means of enforcing them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to discuss the progress of his invasion of Ukraine with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during his upcoming visit to Turkey, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, cited by Russia's RIA state news agency on Friday.

Peskov declined to say when exactly Putin would make the visit, but a Turkish official told Reuters this week that it would take place on February 12.

RIA also quoted Peskov as saying Turkey was coming under pressure from the "Anglo-Saxons" — meaning the United States and the United Kingdom — over its ties with Russia, but that Ankara was preserving its independence.

Putin's ability to travel outside Russia has been limited since March last year when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him for the alleged deportation of Ukrainian children, a war crime.

But Turkey is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, so Putin can travel there without fear of being arrested.

Russia has repeatedly refused Ukrainian requests to hand over the bodies of 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW) allegedly killed when a Russian military transport plane was downed by a missile, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official.

Moscow and Kyiv have traded accusations over the January 24 crash, with the Kremlin accusing Ukraine of killing its own men, suggestions which Ukraine has dismissed as "rampant Russian propaganda." Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces downed the Il-76 transport plane, and Russia's claim that the crash killed Ukrainian POWs couldn't be independently verified.

Andrii Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence, claimed that some of the Ukrainian POWs who were meant to be part of a prisoner exchange on the day of the plane crash were swapped on Wednesday this week when about 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war returned home — thus casting doubt on Russian claims.

Yusov reiterated Ukraine's call for an international probe into the incident to determine whether the cargo plane carried weapons or passengers along with the crew.

Most western intelligence assessments agree that the plane was likely shot down by a Ukrainian missile, with one anonymous French official telling the Associated Press that Patriot surface-to-air missiles were used, the battery turning on its radar "just long enough to hit them." But there has still been no confirmation that POWs were onboard the plane.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, denied that the Kremlin had received any Ukrainian request to hand over the bodies. He told the state news agency RIA Novosti on Friday any such request would be considered by Russian law enforcement once an official probe is completed.,

He also said Russia would "insist" on an international inquiry into what he called a Ukrainian "crime."

The European Union's approval of a €50 billion ($54.5bn) aid package for Ukraine is a "vital decision," says Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for the European and Euro Atlantic integration of Ukraine.

Speaking to DW on Friday, Stefanishyna welcomed not only the military support for those fighting on the frontline, but also for citizens at home.

"It's a message to all Ukrainian people, medical workers, social workers, teachers, that they will have their necessary payments and to Ukrainian society, which has the signal that it will survive for another four years," she said.

Nevertheless, Stefanishyna said that Kyiv was still "anxious" about future support from the United States, but rejected the notion that European support for Ukraine was waning, too.

Read and watch the full interview with Olha Stefanishyna here.

Two French aid workers were killed and three others injured in Beryslav near the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Thursday, French and Ukrainian officials have confirmed.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne wrote on social media that "two French volunteers have paid with their lives for their engagement to help the Ukrainians," denouncing what he called "Russian barbarity" and insisting "Russia will have to answer for its crimes."

French president Emmanuel Macron called the attack "a cowardly and outrageous act."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed gratitude for the Frenchmen's work in his war-torn country.

"Russian terror knows no boundaries or victims' nationalities," he said. "The brave French aid workers assisted people and we will always be grateful for their humanity."

Beryslav, which sits on the Dnipro River close to the front line, has regularly been targeted by Russian drones and artillery. On January 27, one person was killed there by an explosive launched by a Russian drone.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians were without electricity on Friday morning after Russian drone attacks targeted key infrastructure.

According to the Ukrainian air force, 11 out of 24 Iranian-made drones were shot down, but some of those that found their targets damaged an electrical transformer stadion in Kryvyi Rih, the central Ukrainian hometown of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lysak, said that "more than 40,000 customers" were without power, as well as two mines. Around 100 miners who were underground at the time were freed without injury, he said.

Lysak also said a 37-year-old man was injured by Russian shelling in the village of Pokrovske.

Further north in the Kharkiv region, local authorities said 64 towns and villages were without electricity following the Russian attacks.

In response to almost nightly Russian aerial assault, Ukraine has increasingly been launching retaliatory strikes against Russia itself.

Over a dozen Ukrainian drones have been launched against villages in the Russian border region of Belgorod in the last 24 hours, according to local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, but no casualties have been reported.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy reportedly rowed back on a threat to dismiss Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi earlier this week after the top general refused to resign and potential replacements declined to take on the role.

Orysia Lutsevyc, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program and head of the Ukraine Forum at the think tank Chatham House, said dismissing Zaluzhnyi would be an "unpopular decision."

Speaking to DW, Lutsevyc stressed the commander-in-chief's popularity within Ukraine.

"General Zaluzhnyi is hugely popular. He is almost a legend, right? Few people [have] actually seen him alive, but he is this mystic figure. He is also extremely popular among the soldiers on the battlefield for his approach to save life, to protect his troops and to mitigate this politics of war, where, you know, political tasks on the battlefield do not cause a catastrophe on the battlefield."

Lutsevyc said that sacking him would be the first time for Zelenskyy to go "against the popular will" since the start of the war. 

"He will have to carefully explain it because he may be blamed for undermining the war effort and unity inside Ukraine. So it's very critical how this is done and what are the public reasons that are communicated to wider society about this critical move."

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday is due to make a preliminary ruling on jurisdiction in a case filed by Ukraine against Russia.

The highest court of the United Nations is expected to decide whether it is authorized to open main proceedings in this case. 

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion on February 24, 2022, part of his reasoning was that pro-Russian people in eastern Ukraine had been "subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime."

Two days into the invasion, Ukraine filed a suit at the ICJ, "emphatically denying" this and arguing that Russia's use of "genocide" as a pretext went against the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

In a preliminary ruling in March 2022, the ICJ sided with Ukraine and ordered Russia to halt its invasion immediately. But Russia objected to this judgement, saying the Hague-based ICJ, which decides on disputes between states, had no legal right to decide in this case.

Only on Wednesday, the same court had largely dismissed another case brought by Ukraine against Russia in 2017 and acquitted Russia of the accusation of financing terrorism in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked the European Union for approving €50 billion ($54 billion) worth of aid, which he said would send a "clear signal" to Russia.

"Today the EU has made a long-awaited decision," Zelenskyy said in his nightly address. "This is a clear signal to Moscow that Europe will withstand and that Europe will not be broken," he said.

"At the same time, it is a clear signal across the Atlantic, a signal that Europe is assuming its responsibilities. Security responsibilities. Strong responsibilities. We await decisions from America," Zelenskyy added.

Meanwhile, First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said that the Ukrainian  government expected this year to receive €18 billion of the €50 billion, four-year EU package approved on Thursday. The first tranche of €4.5 billion is expected in March.

Two French nationals were killed and three other foreigners wounded in Beryslav, near the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to Ukrainian officials.

"Foreign volunteers were killed and injured as a result of an enemy strike on Beryslav," Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.

Prokudin did not specify the exact duties of the volunteers, but he described them using a Ukrainian word that typically refers to workers from humanitarian organizations. 

"The Russian army killed two French citizens. Three more foreigners received minor injuries," he said, offering his "sincere condolences to the families of the dead." 

The Ukrainian national police also reported that two men of French nationality had died as a result of a drone attack and that four others had been injured. 

dh/jsi (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)