Ukraine-Russia war – live: Kyiv ‘strikes airfield’ in occupied Crimea as Putin prepares to visit Turkey

Judges at the top UN court ruled that Russia violated elements of a UN.anti-terrorism treaty, but declined to rule on allegations brought by Kyiv that Moscow was responsible for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

In the same ruling, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Russia had breached an anti-discrimination treaty by failing to support Ukrainian language education in Crimea after its 2014 annexation of the peninsula.

The decisions were a legal setback for Kyiv. The court rejected Ukraine‘s requests to order reparations for both violations and only ordered Russia to comply with the treaties.

Ukraine had filed the lawsuit at the ICJ, also known as the World Court, in 2017, accusing Russia of violating an anti-terrorism treaty by funding pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

The court’s judges said Moscow violated the U.N.’s anti-terrorism treaty by not investigating plausible allegations that some funds were sent from Russia to Ukraine to possibly fund terrorist activities.

The 16-judge panel ordered Russia to investigate any plausible allegations of terrorism financing but turned down a request by Kyiv for reparations.

Russian president Vladimir Putin will visit Turkey in February to meet counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, a Turkish official has confirmed.

It will be the Russian leader’s first trip to a NATO ally since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Turkey, which shares a maritime border with both Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, has sought to maintain good ties with both nations since Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

It has provided military support to Kyiv and voiced support for its territorial integrity, but also opposes sanctions on Russia.

Putin’s scope to travel abroad 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 to Russia, a war crime. Russia denied the charge and called the move outrageous, but said it was legally void in any case because Russia is not a member of the ICC.

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

The Ukrainian military claimed on Wednesday to have struck a military air base in Russian-occupied Crimea, while Moscow said it had thwarted the attack by shooting down missiles but some debris had hit a military installation.

In a post on Telegram, Ukraine’s Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk thanked the military for conducting the operation, hitting Belbek airfield on the southwestern tip of the Crimea Peninsula near Russia’s main naval base at Sevastopol.

“Ukrainian aviators will definitely return to their home airfield,” he said, posting a video from social media of the purported strike.

According to the Russian Defence Ministry, Moscow thwarted an attack on Crimea and shot down 20 Ukrainian missiles – 17 over the Black Sea and three more over the peninsula.

The ministry said fragments of Ukrainian missiles fell on the territory of a military unit in Lyubimovka, which is near the Belbek military air base. The incident caused no damage to “aviation equipment”, it said.

The European Union expects to reach 52 percent of its target to send one million rounds of shells to Ukraine by March this year, according to the latest production data compiled by the Commision, the bloc’s foreign policy chief has said.

Speaking after an EU ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Josep Borrell also said EU countries plan to train another 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers, on top of 40,000 already trained.

Ukraine‘s ground forces commander Oleksandr Syrsky was offered the job of replacing his boss Valeriy Zaluzhny as commander of the armed forces, but declined, a source familiar with the matter has told Reuters.

Ukrainian media reported that President Volodymyr Zelensky asked General Zaluzhny, head of the Ukrainian army, to step aside this week, but that he refused.

It has been reported that both Syrsky and Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s intelligence services, had been offered the job. It has now been claimed that both turned down the opportunity.

Syrsky is a top commander in the Ukrainian army who oversaw the liberation of Kharkiv, northeast Ukraine, in September 2022, as well as the defence of Kyiv at the start of the war. He also oversaw the main thrust of last year’s counteroffensive.

Zaluzhny’s exit as army chief would represent a huge shake-up in the Ukrainian military, which is fending off multiple Russian attacks in the east as uncertainty grows over the future of vital US and European Union support.

The source, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, was unable to say exactly how or when the job offer was communicated to Syrsky.

President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Ukraine used a US-supplied Patriot air defence system to shoot down a Russian Il-76 military transport plane last week in the Belgorod region that Moscow says killed all 74 people on board.

Putin also said that Russia, like Ukraine, wanted an international investigation into the incident.

Moscow accuses Kyiv of downing the Ilyushin Il-76 plane and of killing 74 people on board, including 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers it said were en route to be swapped for Russian prisoners of war.

Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that it downed the plane, and has demanded proof of who was on board.

“The plane was downed, and it’s been definitively established by an American Patriot system – the expert analysis has already established that,” said Putin.

“We insist that an international investigation be carried out. No international organisations are willing to do this,” he added, saying Russia was officially asking for such an investigation.

He said that Ukraine had fired two missiles at the plane.

Russia and Ukraine have said they had completed a prisoner exchange, the first since the crash last week of a Russian military transport plane that Moscow says was carrying 65 Ukrainian soldiers ahead of a similar swap.

The Russian Defence Ministry said each side had got 195 soldiers back and that its own soldiers would be flown to Moscow to receive medical and psychological treatment.

It was cited by the RIA state news agency as saying that the United Arab Emirates had played a role in brokering the deal.

“On January 31, as a result of the negotiation process, 195 Russian servicemen who were in mortal danger in captivity were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In return, exactly 195 prisoners from the armed forces of Ukraine were handed over,” the defence ministry said in a statement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on his official account on X that it was one of the biggest swaps so far. He gave a slightly higher number for the number of Ukrainians returned.

The United Nations’ top court is ruling Wednesday in a case in which Ukraine accuses Russia of bankrolling rebels in 2014 and discriminating against Crimea’s multiethnic community since its annexation of the region.

It is the first of two decisions by the International Court of Justice linked to the decadelong conflict between Russia and Ukraine that exploded into a full-blown war nearly two years ago.

The doors close Wednesday on nominations for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, with peace activists connected to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine among the known entries.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee keeps the nominations secret, but those with nomination rights sometimes make their picks public.

Attempts to find an end the war in Gaza have been a theme for some of the announced nominations.