President Vladimir Putin said Russia had modernised almost its entire strategic nuclear arsenal, reviving atomic rhetoric as he boasted that the war in Ukraine had shifted in his favour.

Ukraine’s Black Sea grain corridor was performing better than expected, but stronger air defence was needed to quicken ship loading times and better shield ports, according to Kyiv’s top infrastructure official.

Zelensky ‘confident US won’t betray Ukraine’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was confident the US would not “betray” the war-battered country as $61-billion is held up by a political standoff in Washington.

“I’m certain the US won’t betray us — and what has been agreed upon will be fulfilled,” Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv at a press conference organised to close out the year.

Ukraine’s war effort against the Russian invasion has ground to a standstill as the battered nation approaches its third year of war, with more than $110-billion in financial aid from Kyiv’s main allies entangled in political infighting in Washington and Brussels.

Putin revives atomic rhetoric, boasts about success in Ukraine

Putin said Russia had modernised almost its entire strategic nuclear arsenal, reviving atomic rhetoric as he boasted the war in Ukraine had shifted in his favour.

The role of Russia’s air, sea and land nuclear triad in ensuring a balance of power “has increased significantly” amid the “emergence of new military-political risks”, Putin told a Defence Ministry meeting in Moscow on Tuesday. The proportion of modern weaponry in its nuclear forces this year “has been brought to 95% and in the naval component almost 100%,” he said.

In a speech laced with familiar claims that he ordered the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine to counter alleged threats to Russia’s security from the US and its Nato allies, Putin said his forces “have the initiative” on the battlefield.

“We do what we think is necessary, what we want,” he said, adding that Ukraine “is suffering heavy losses and has largely squandered its reserves”.

Despite incurring massive Russian troop losses, Putin continues to enjoy broad domestic support for the February 2022 invasion that was meant to deliver victory within days and is now in its 22nd month. 

With fighting along the front line largely at a stalemate as winter sets in, Putin said last week that Russia had 617,000 troops deployed in Ukraine. The Kremlin appears confident Russia can hold on to eastern and southern Ukrainian territory seized by its forces.

Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told the same meeting that Russia had completed the introduction of the Avangard hypersonic nuclear missile to its strategic forces and was continuing to bring the Yars intercontinental ballistic missile into service. Russia was also adding four new Tu-160 strategic bomber aircraft, he said.

Throughout the war in Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly warned the US and its allies against involvement in the conflict, hinting at Russia’s willingness to use any weapon in its arsenal to protect its security. 

Russia’s war in Ukraine revives the Red Sea as a vital oil route

Russia’s war in Ukraine has made the now-treacherous waters of the southern Red Sea a vital global trade corridor for oil — especially Moscow’s exports.

As Europe has shunned Russian barrels, it has increasingly relied on cargoes from the Middle East. Meanwhile, Moscow has boosted flows to Asia as it seeks outlets for its exports. That has raised the movement of oil through the Red Sea, both northbound and southbound, by around 140%, to 3.8 million barrels a day.

The surge highlights the vulnerability of a key choke point for oil flows as global powers redraw the world’s energy trade map. In recent days, a major escalation of attacks on merchant ships by Yemen-based Houthi militants has caused companies including BP and Equinor to halt shipments and reroute vessels, with oil prices initially rising on the news. 

The incidents have prompted the US and its allies to establish a task force in the region to counter the attacks. But the strikes on shipping have also drawn attention to just how much oil is moving through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. 

In the two months before it attacked Ukraine, Russia sent about 120,000 barrels a day of crude from its western ports to markets east of Suez, tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. In the past six months, that figure has averaged 1.7 million barrels a day. 

Over the same period, crude shipments from the Middle East to European countries have jumped from about 870,000 barrels a day to 1.3 million barrels a day. 

Shipments of petroleum products through the Suez Canal have more than doubled since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, according to information from analytics firm Kpler, compiled by Bloomberg. 

Companies in the European Union stepped back from Russian crude oil purchases shortly after the war began. The bloc imposed a crude embargo in December 2022 and followed it up with a prohibition on fuel imports two months later. 

That’s forced Russia to send its oil on much longer journeys to buyers in China and India, making tanker safety in the Red Sea their problem too, in a way that it never has been before. Almost all of the crude shipped from Russia’s western ports needs to pass by the Red Sea coast of Yemen.

Kyiv seeks better air defence to boost exports via the Black Sea

Ukraine’s Black Sea grain corridor was performing better than expected, but stronger air defence was needed to quicken ship loading times and better shield ports, according to Kyiv’s top infrastructure official.

The war-hit nation has exported almost 10 million tonnes of commodities, mostly grains, through the passage since August despite a short period of unfavourable weather, the deputy prime minister and minister for restoration, Oleksandr Kubrakov, told Bloomberg News. While the volumes were lower than last year’s exports through a UN-backed corridor approved by Russia, Kubrakov said Kyiv “will catch up”. 

As Kyiv and Moscow trade drone and missile attacks, protecting port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region remains key for the safety of the shipping corridor, Kubrakov said. More modern air defence, including US-made F-16 fighter jets, should help, he added. 

Russia’s crude flows stay strong despite Baltic port stoppage

Russia’s seaborne crude exports climbed again on a four-week average basis, despite a dip in weekly flows driven by a brief pause in shipments from the Baltic port of Primorsk.

About 3.28 million barrels a day of crude were shipped from Russian ports in the four weeks to 17 December, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg show. That was up by 80,000 barrels a day from the revised figure for the period to 10 December. The more volatile weekly average gave up about two-thirds of the previous week’s increase, with a four-day gap in loading schedules at Primorsk suggesting planned work affecting the port. DM