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What did 16 December 2023 show about the war's edges?
Summary
A look back at a day when strikes in occupied Kherson region sat alongside a drone crash in Romania and a sanctions sentence in the United States.
What did the war look like at its edges on 16 December 2023? Reports from that day and the days just before it point to a conflict that kept touching places far from the main front lines.
On 16 December 2023, Russia said two civilians were killed and two others injured in a Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian-occupied village of Nova Maiachka in Kherson Raion. The report came as part of the southern Ukraine campaign, and it was Russia's own account of the incident.
A drone across the NATO border
Two days earlier, on 14 December 2023, Romania said a Russian drone had crashed on its territory, leaving a crater in Grindu, in Tulcea county, near the Ukrainian border. Romanian Air Force F-16s and German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons carried out joint patrols in response to the violation of NATO airspace. The episode came amid Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.
Sanctions enforcement in the United States
On the same day, 14 December 2023, ex-FBI agent Charles McGonigal was sentenced to more than four years in prison for violating U.S. sanctions on Russia, including laundering money for the oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The case shows that the sanctions regime was being enforced in court as well as at the borders of the war zone.
Why the cluster matters
Taken together, these reports span an occupied village in Kherson Raion, a NATO member's airspace and a courtroom in the United States. The patrols by Romanian and German aircraft showed allied air forces responding in practice after the crash in Tulcea. The McGonigal sentence showed legal consequences for breaching sanctions on Russia.
