Weekly Russia-Ukraine war summary: Raids on Russia's oil depots and chemical plants, battles in Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, North Korean POWs

Mutual strikes and sabotage

The AFU Air Force reported (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) downing 357 Shahed drones and other UAVs of unidentified types out of 537 launched during the week. Another 167 UAVs were “radar lost.”

The AFU also claims to have intercepted 30 out of 45 launched missiles of various types. Of these, 43 were launched on the night of Jan. 15. The strike affected the above-ground equipment of a gas storage facility in Stryi District of the Lviv Region.

Russia is also known to have carried out strikes against the following civilian targets:

• On Jan. 11, a drone struck a civilian vehicle outside the village of Primorske in the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Zaporizhzhia Region. A woman was killed and another four people were injured.
• On Jan. 12, the AFU reported two airstrikes near a boarding school in Sudzha, which served as a shelter for elderly people. One person was killed. Military analyst Yan Matveev draws attention to a large crater near a destroyed fire station building nearby, where Russian intelligence believes Ukrainian troops may have been stationed.
• On Jan. 15, a multi-story building in Kramatorsk was reported hit in an airstrike. At least eight civilians, including two minors, were injured.
• On Jan. 16, two people were killed and 10 were injured in a shelling strike in the Kherson Region, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
• On Jan. 17, a strike on Kryvyi Rih damaged an apartment block, killing four people and injuring 14. Russian propagandists reported a strike on a supposed AFU barracks in the building of a supposedly non-operational college, but The Insider found that the educational institution was still working as a civilian place of higher learning at the time of the strike.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) intercepting 270 fixed-wing UAVs, eight Storm Shadow missiles, and a HIMARS rocket over Russian territory and the occupied Crimean Peninsula during the week. According to SHOT, more than 200 UAVs and five ATACMS missiles were downed on the night of Jan. 14 alone. Throughout the week, the following facilities were reportedly affected:

The radar station of an S-400 surface-to-air missile system in the Belgorod Region on Jan. 16.

Losses

Volodymyr Zelensky reported the first North Korean soldiers captured alive. According to the Ukrainian president, the North Korean fighters were taken after being wounded. They were transported to Kyiv, where they received the necessary medical care. Both of the North Koreans said under questioning that they did not know they had been sent to war in Ukraine and initially believed they had come for exercises.