Russia launches missile strikes on southern Ukraine, Russia’s former deputy energy minister detained on fraud charges
Novaya Europe’s roundup
Vladimir Putin. Photo: Kremlin.ru
It is day 638 of the war in Ukraine. There have been reports of explosions in the Ukrainian cities of Voznesensk and Kryvyi Rih overnight.
Russia’s former deputy energy minister has been detained in Moscow on suspicion of large-scale fraud.
Putin has decreed the transfer of printing presses that had been left to Nobel laureate Dmitry Muratov to the Moscow Mayor’s office.
Russia launches missile attacks on several regions of Ukraine
The southern Ukrainian cities of Voznesensk and Kryvyi Rih in the Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions respectively were both targeted by Russian missile strikes overnight, according to local Telegram channels.
Serhiy Lysak, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said a missile had struck infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih but that there had been no casualties. In the aftermath of the attack, Kryvyi Rih Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul commented simply “Everything’s fine. Good night.”
Former deputy minister detained in Moscow
Police in Moscow have detained a former deputy energy minister on suspicion of large-scale fraud, state-owned news agency TASS reported on Wednesday.
Pyotr Nidzelsky, who served as Russia’s deputy energy minister from 1994 until 2004, can be held until 18 January. According to the Agentstvo Telegram channel, Nidzelsky became one of the largest investors in Crimea since the Russian annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
Putin signs decree handing printing presses due to Muratov to the Moscow mayor
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree transferring the ownership of five printing presses previously belonging to Norwegian media company Amedia to the Moscow Mayor’s office.
Amedia, which exited the Russian market last year, left its properties in Russia to be managed by Dmitry Muratov, the former editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, which for years used the presses to print its newspaper.
The presses, which have been the subject of a legal dispute for some time, are expected to be redistributed by the Moscow Mayor’s office to the authorities in the cities of Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Voronezh and Novosibirsk.