Excellent morning from Kyiv where by the snow is melting and an unseasonably warm number of days are forecast.

The capital has been tranquil due to the fact Russia’s double assault on Saturday but in excess of in Dnipro, the operation to account for individuals still missing right after the missile attack on a residential making carries on. The death toll presently stands at 40.

What’s occurring today?

It is day two of Davos, the yearly Planet Economic Discussion board assembly in the Swiss Alps wherever a big Ukrainian delegation of ministers and mayors, headed by Ukrainian Initial Girl Olena Zelenska, are all hoping to secure a lot more aid and weapons for Ukraine.

“That’s why I am in this article,” reported Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko, including: “it is really quite important to converse straight… it truly is incredibly essential to have a own relationship.”

Zelenska is scheduled to speak this night and President Volodymyr Zelensky is established to communicate by way of videolink at facet gatherings of the forum on Wednesday and Thursday.

You can read additional about what’s now took place at Davos listed here.

What was in President Zelensky’s most up-to-date message? 

All through his every day address on Monday night, President Zelensky concentrated on the ongoing rescue procedure at the web-site of the household making strike by a Russian missile on Saturday in which at least 40 men and women – which include 3 little ones – died.

“The Security Support of Ukraine has by now started off to assemble information about those Russian military services who ready and carried out this strike,” he claimed.

“There is no question: every single individual guilty of this war criminal offense will be discovered and introduced to justice.”

Zelensky also praised the U.K. for the latest package deal of British army aid it is sending to Ukraine, such as 14 Challenger 2 tanks. 

“A new offer of defense help has been announced, just what we have to have,” Zelensky explained.

“Tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery [are topics] mentioned with Primary Minister Sunak. I thank you, Rishi, I thank every Briton for the tangible and timely help!” 

What is the most up-to-date armed service condition?

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) update on Jan. 17 focuses on the missile that struck Dnipro on Saturday, indicating irrespective of the Kremlin’s promises it was not responsible, it was “highly likely” that the rocket was an “AS-4 Kitchen area substantial anti-ship missile, launched from a Tu-22M3 BACKFIRE medium bomber”. 

The MoD provides: “Russia falsely implied a Ukrainian air defense missile was accountable. Kitchen is notoriously inaccurate when used versus floor targets as its radar direction method is weak at differentiating targets in urban areas.

“Similar weapons have been liable for other incidents of civilian mass-casualties, such as the Kremenchuk searching heart strike of June 27, 2022.

“While some missiles these kinds of as Kitchen are unsuitable for precision strikes, evidence from the Ukraine war implies that the dysfunction of Russia’s lengthy-array strike capacity is more profound. It hugely very likely struggles to dynamically detect targets, and to access swift and accurate battle problems assessment.”

The Institute for the Examine of War’s Jan. 16 day by day assessment addresses a multitude of topics, most notably: 

·       The Kremlin proceeds to publicly obstacle Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s statements that Wagner Team forces have been entirely accountable for capturing Soledar, Donetsk Oblast

·       NATO Secretary-Typical Jens Stoltenberg dismissed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s repeated fears that the Western provision of weapons to Ukraine could cause a nuclear escalation.

·       A distinguished milblogger revived pre-February 2022 discussions of Kremlin intent to return shut Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk to electricity in Ukraine. 

And that’s it for today’s Morning Memo.

Kyiv Submit will deliver you the most up-to-date news through the working day and we’ll be back with yet another edition tomorrow.

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Ukraine’s first lady will give a rare international address as the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in the snowy Swiss town of Davos gets into full swing on Tuesday, part of a push by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government to acquire more foreign weapons to defend against Russia’s invasion.

Security teams fanned out and snowplows cleared streets as Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska and hundreds of government officials, corporate titans, academics and activists from around the world descended on the town billed as Europe’s highest for the traditional winter gathering in Davos. The COVID-19 pandemic torpedoed the snow-covered event each of the last two years, but a springtime iteration was held eight months ago.

Davos attendees are faced with global strife including Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has killed thousands of civilians, displaced millions, and jolted food and fuel markets worldwide, epitomizing a feeling of frustration about how conflict and bloodshed are still befuddling modern society.

Adding to the gloom are an economic slowdown and a warming world, with the weeklong talkfest of big ideas and backroom deal-making prioritizing such problems but never making clear how much concrete action emerges to help reach the forum’s stated ambition of “improving the state of the world.”

In a reminder of the fragility of the planet amid climate change, a giant illuminated wall featuring colorful, AI-conceived art derived from real images of coral reefs was one of the whiz-bang innovations welcoming attendees, showing how technology can immortalize images of natural beauty that might vanish one day.

Dozens of sessions Tuesday will take up issues as diverse as gender parity, the return of manufacturing, the green transition, efforts to end tuberculosis and the intersection of food, water and energy, featuring actor Idris Elba. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will speak.

With a war on the same continent, on many concerned minds in Davos was the devastation from a Russian missile strike that hit an apartment building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, killing at least 40 people in one of the deadliest single attacks in months.

Ukrainians have reacted to such tragedies during nearly a year of war with unbowed defiance, anger and determination to fight back.

Zelenska’s speech will come after she told CNN through an interpreter on Sunday that despite Russia missile strikes that have pounded Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian areas in recent months, “we understand that upon carrying on for a year, we are capable of persevering for even longer.”

The high-level Ukrainian diplomatic push in Davos in the spotlight of CEOs, global government officials and the media offers a new chance to enlist and ramp up international support that the Ukrainians have been clamoring for: weapons like tanks and anti-rocket defenses as well as greater pressure to further isolate and squeeze Russia’s economy.

France, the U.K., the U.S. and other nations are vowing to send increasingly powerful weapons to Ukraine, such as tanks or armored combat vehicles.

Increased military aid has come after pleas from Ukrainian leaders and notables. Zelenska asked Congress for more U.S. air defense systems as she visited Washington for a week in July and met at the White House with U.S. first lady Jill Biden.

Zelenskyy, after traveling to Washington himself last month to reinvigorate support for Ukraine in his first known trip abroad since the invasion, will be beamed in by video on Wednesday to complement the in-person delegation of his wife and officials such as Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. The latter seemed determined to get business leaders to shun business with Russia.

“Stop trade with Russia: Every dollar that you send to Russia is bloody money,” he told reporters Monday.

The Yale School of Management has compiled a list showing about 1,000 companies have curtailed operations in Russia, but some Western multinationals still operate there.

The forum has blacklisted Russia — and it will remain so for the foreseeable future.

“We made it clear in the spring that it is now up to Russia,” forum President Borge Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister, said Sunday. “If they start to again comply with the U.N. Charter, if they again comply with basic humanitarian law, and don’t break international law, they of course will come back.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of the World Economic Forum meeting at https://apnews.com/hub/world-economic-forum

Given that the outset of the full-scale invasion, Russian troops have killed 456 young children throughout Ukraine, injuring a further 897.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Alina Kapatsyna often dreams about getting a phone call from her mother. In those visions, her mother tells her that she’s coming home.

Men in military uniforms took 45-year-old Vita Hannych away from her house in eastern Ukraine in April. She never returned.

Her family later learned that Hannych, who has long suffered from seizures because of a brain cyst, is in custody in the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region.

Kapatsyna told The Associated Press that it remains unclear why her mother — ”a peaceful, civilian and sick person” who has never held a weapon — was detained.

Hannych is one of many Ukrainian noncombatants being held by Russian forces for months following their invasion. Some are deemed to be prisoners of war, even though they never took part in the fighting. Others are in a sort of legal limbo — not facing any criminal charges or considered to be POWs.

Hannych was wearing only a sweatsuit and slippers when she was seized by Russian forces occupying her village of Volodymyrivka several weeks into the Feb. 24 invasion. It is still under Moscow’s control.

Her family initially thought she would come home shortly. Russian forces were known to detain people for two or three days for “filtration” and then release them, Kapatsyna said, and Hannych had no military or law enforcement connections.

When she wasn’t released, Kapatsyna and her 64-year-old grandmother started a search. At first, letters and visits to various Russian-installed officials and government bodies in the Donetsk region yielded no results.

“The answers from everywhere were the same: ‘We did not take her away.’ Who took her then, if no one took her?” said Kapatsyna, who left the village in March for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Dnipro.

Then, they finally got some clarity: Hannych was jailed in Olenivka, another Russian-controlled city, according to a letter from the Moscow-installed prosecutor’s office in the Donetsk region.

The jail staff told Kapatsyna’s grandmother that Hannych was a sniper, allegations her family deems absurd, given her condition. Medical records seen by the AP confirmed that she had a brain cyst, as well as “residual encephalopathy” and “general convulsive attacks.”

Anna Vorosheva, who spent 100 days in the same facility as Hannych, recounted squalid, inhumane conditions: putrid drinking water, no heat or showers, having to sleep in shifts and hearing new prisoners screaming from being beaten.

Vorosheva, 46, said she wasn’t told why she was detained, aside from “smirks and jokes about Nazis” — a reference to Russia’s false claims that what it calls its “special military operation” was a campaign to “denazify” Ukraine. She also said the staff told her: “Be happy we’re not beating you.”

Donetsk authorities labeled Hannych a POW and recently told the family she is imprisoned in the occupied city of Mariupol. It remains unclear when, if at all, she could be released.

Ukraine’s top human rights organization, Center for Civil Liberties, has requests concerning around 900 civilians captured by Russia since the war began, with more than half still in custody.

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights envoy, put the number even higher and said Friday that his office received inquiries concerning more than 20,000 “civilian hostages” detained by Russia.

Russian lawyer Leonid Solovyov told the AP he has amassed more than 100 requests concerning Ukrainian civilians. He said he was able to help 30-40 confirm the person they looked for was in Russian custody without any legal status — just like his client, Mykyta Shkriabin.

The student from northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region was detained by Russia’s military in March and has been held ever since without charges or any legal proceedings.

Shkryabin, then 19, was sheltering from the fighting in a basement with his family, according to his mother, Tetiana. During a break, he went out for supplies — and never returned.

Tetiana Shkriabina told the AP that she learned from witnesses that Russian soldiers seized him.

Months later, Solovyov got confirmation from Russia’s Defense Ministry that Shkriabin was detained for “resisting the special military operation.” There is no such offense on the books in Russia, Solovyov said, and even if there was, Shkriabin would have been formally charged and investigated, but that hasn’t happened. The ministry refused to disclose his whereabouts.

Moreover, when Solovyov filed a complaint to Russia’s Investigative Committee contesting the detention, it confirmed that there are no criminal probes opened against Shkriabin, that he is neither a suspect, nor an accused.

Skhriabin, who turned 20 in captivity, hasn’t been labeled a POW, Solovyov said, adding: “His legal status is simply a hostage.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Other cases are eerily similar to those of Shkriabin and Hannych.

In May, Russian forces detained information technology specialist Iryna Horobtsova in the southern city of Kherson when it was occupied by Moscow. They raided her apartment, seizing a laptop, two cellphones and several flash drives, and then took her away, according to her sister, Elena Kornii. They promised her parents that she would be home that evening — but it didn’t happen.

Horobtsova remained in the city and spoke out against the war on social media before she was detained, Kornii said. She had attended anti-Russia protests and also helped residents by driving them to work or finding scarce medications.

“She hasn’t violated any Ukrainian laws,” Kornii said, noting that her sister had nothing to do with the military.

Horobtsova’s lawyer, Emil Kurbedinov, said he believed that Russian security forces were carrying out “purges of the disloyal” in Kherson.

He learned from Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, that she was still in custody. The Interior Ministry in Moscow-annexed Crimea told him that Horobtsova was in a detention center there. When Kurbedinov tried to visit her, officials refused to acknowledge having any such prisoner.

As for why she was held, Kurbedinov said authorities told him that “she resisted the special military operation, and a decision regarding her will be made when the special military operation is over.”

Kurbedinov described her as “unlawfully imprisoned.”

Dmytro Orlov, mayor of the occupied city of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhia region, describes the fate of his deputy the same way — “an absolutely arbitrary detention.”

Ivan Samoydyuk was picked up by Russian soldiers shortly after seizing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in March, and no charges have been filed against him, Orlov said.

“We’re not even sure if he’s alive!” the mayor said. “If we can’t get clarity from the Russians about the fate of a deputy mayor, imagine the fate of ordinary Ukrainian civilians.”

Mykhailo Savva of the Expert Council of the Center for Civil Liberties said the Geneva Conventions allow a state to detain civilians temporarily in occupied areas, but “as soon as the reason that caused the detention of this civilian disappears, then this person must be released.”

“No special conditions, no trades, just release,” Savva said, noting that civilians can’t be declared POWs under international law.

International law prohibits a warring party from forcibly moving a civilian to its own territory or territory it occupies, and doing so could be deemed a war crime, said Yulia Gorbunova, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

POWs can be exchanged, but there is no legal mechanism for swapping noncombatants, Gorbunova said, complicating efforts to free civilians from captivity.

Since the war began, however, Kyiv has been able to bring some home. Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on Jan. 8 that 132 civilians were brought back from Russian captivity in 2022.

Lubinets, the Ukrainian human rights ombudsman, met this month with his Russian counterpart, Tatyana Moskalkova.

He said he gave Moskalkova lists of some of the 20,000 Ukrainian civilians he said were held by Russia, and “the Russian side agreed to find out where they are, in what condition and why they are being held.”

After getting such information, the question “of the procedure for their return” will be raised, Lubinets said.

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Dasha Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Yuras Karmanau contributed to this report from Tallinn.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

The Armed Forces of Ukraine eradicated about 116,950 Russian troops in Ukraine from February 24, 2022 to January 17, 2023, such as 870 invaders around the past day alone.

Russian troops shelled a few communities in Dnipropetrovsk region overnight.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A public memorial service for Lisa Marie Presley will be held next weekend at Graceland, the famed Memphis home of her father, Elvis Presley.

The memorial for Lisa Marie Presley will be held on the front lawn of the mansion at 9 a.m. on Jan. 22, according to a representative of her daughter and actor Riley Keough.

Presley, 54, died Thursday, hours after being hospitalized for a medical emergency.

It was previously announced that Presley will be buried at Graceland next to her son, Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020. Elvis and other members of the Presley family are also buried at Graceland.

A singer-songwriter herself, Lisa Marie did not live in Memphis, where she was born. But she made trips to the city for celebrations of her father’s birth anniversary and commemorations of his death, which stunned the world when he was found dead in Graceland at age 42 on Aug. 16, 1977.

Lisa Marie became the sole heir of the Elvis Presley Trust, which — along with Elvis Presley Enterprises — managed Graceland and other assets until she sold her majority interest in 2005. She retained ownership of the mansion itself, the 13 acres around it and items inside the home.

She is survived by her mother, Priscilla Presley, and three children.