These are the key developments as the war begins on Day 693.

Here is the situation as of Wednesday, January 17, 2024.

Battle

• At least 17 people were injured, two seriously, after two Russian missiles struck a residential area in the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Rescue teams searched through piles of rubble to see if anyone else had been injured after what the city’s mayor called two “strong explosions.”
• Officials in the southern Russian city of Voronezh declared a “state of emergency” after air defenses shot down five suspected Ukrainian drones. Two children were injured. There were no further reports of casualties or damage. The city of more than a million people is about 250 km (155 miles) from the border with Ukraine and is home to a military airfield.
• Authorities in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region ordered more than 3,000 residents of more than two dozen villages near the front line to evacuate because of Russian attacks in the area.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj gave an emotional speech to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos called on his country’s allies They want to tighten sanctions against Russia and increase their support for Kiev to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war does not succeed. Zelensky said the West’s hesitation was costing time and lives and could prolong the fighting for years.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised this continued US support for Ukraine at a meeting with Zelensky, although right-wing Republicans in the US Congress blocked new funds in the dispute over US border policy.
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the need for continued European Union support for Ukraine. “Ukraine can win in this war, but we must continue to strengthen its resistance,” she said at the Davos conference. EU leaders are due to meet on February 1 to try to salvage a 50 billion euro ($54 billion) aid package for Kiev that was blocked from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is close to Putin.
• After bilateral talks in Budapest, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he agreed with Orban that the EU should not finance the aid package from the bloc’s common budget. Fico also repeated Orban’s assertion that the war cannot be solved by military means.

• Putin rejected Ukraine’s peace plan and said Russia would never give up the territories it occupied in Ukraine. The current course of the war would lead to an “irreparable blow” to Ukrainian statehood, he emphasized in television comments. Putin said Ukraine’s “so-called peace formulas” included “prohibitive demands.” Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace formulato be discussed in the WEF includes an immediate end to hostilities, the withdrawal of all Russian troops and the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

• Putin met in Moscow with visiting North Korean diplomat Choe Son Hui. The meeting was reported on state television, but the Kremlin did not provide further details. Choe, who also held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, praised the “comradely relations” between the two countries. The United States and others have accused North Korea of ​​providing weapons to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
• A Russian court sentenced Colonel Sergei Volkov, a former senior National Guard officer, to six years in prison after he was found guilty of purchasing two ineffective radar air defense systems. The equipment should protect you Kerch Bridge That connects southern Russia with Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014 by shooting down Ukrainian attack drones. But a court said it needed to be modernized to function properly.
• The Estonian domestic secret service said it was investigating academic Vyacheslav Morozov from the University of Tartu on suspicion of spying for Russia. The 53-year-old Russian citizen and professor of international politics has been in custody since January 3rd. The university said his contract had been terminated.

weapons

• French President Emmanuel Macron said he would travel to Ukraine next month to conclude a bilateral security guarantee agreement. Macron said France would send Ukraine 40 long-range SCALP missiles with a range of about 250 km (155 miles) and several hundred bombs in the coming weeks. It has already delivered about 50 SCALP missiles to Ukraine.