Ukraine-Russia war latest: Ukrainian drones strike central Russia as Poland scrambles Nato jets
Russia fires 93 missiles and 200 drones overnight into Ukrainian territory
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Your support makes all the difference.Ukrainian drones attacked an infrastructure facility storing fuel in central Russia’s Oryol region, sparking a fire and smashing windows in homes, regional governor Andrei Klychkov said today.
Mr Klychkov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said a “mass attack” on an infrastructure site caused fuel to catch fire. Fragments from downed drones smashed windows in homes, he said. Drone attacks were reported in other Russian regions.
The governor of Krasnodar region, Vladimir Kondratyev, said air defences had destroyed Ukrainian drones in several areas of the region south and east of Ukraine. One drone smashed windows in village houses, but there were no injuries.
Meanwhile, Poland has been forced to scramble fighter jets to “ensure the security of Polish airspace” after Russia launched a massive aerial attack against Ukraine.
The Polish military said ground-based air defences and radar reconnaissance systems reached the highest state of readiness during the attack overnight yesterday.
Russia fired 93 missiles and almost 200 drones overnight, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky describing it as one of the heaviest bombardments of the country’s energy sector since Russia’s full-scale invasion almost three years ago.
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Finland blocks more Russian property acquisitions
Finland’s ministry of defence has said it has blocked seven real estate transactions involving two Russian buyers on grounds that allowing the acquisitions to take place could threaten national security.
Helsinki has sought for some time to limit Russian citizens’ purchase of property near strategic locations based on existing regulations, blocking three transactions in October 2023 and another three in January this year.
“The Ministry of Defence carefully investigates the backgrounds of every real estate buyer coming from outside the EU and EEA,” Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen said in a statement, referring to the European Union and the European Economic Area which also includes Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
“Protecting our national security is particularly important in the current security situation,” he added.
The latest decisions concern one property in Pargas on the coast of southern Finland and five properties in Kokemaki in the southwestern part of the country, the ministry said in a statement.
The two people making the transactions were both private individuals with Russian citizenship, it added.
Finland’s government in September proposed to ban most Russian citizens from buying property in the country.
Relations between Finland and neighbouring Russia have soured since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, prompting Helsinki to join the NATO military alliance after decades of non-alignment.
AP photos from Ukraine in 2024 convey wartime horror and hope
AP photos from Ukraine in 2024 convey wartime horror and hope
A man falls to his death from the window of a burning apartment after a Russian air strike
Ukraine military chief visits Pokrovsk area as Russia advances nearby
Ukrainian military chief Oleksandr Syrskyi has visited the area of Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine, amid fears that Russian forces are pushing towards its outskirts.
The city of Pokrovsk is a linchpin of the wider Donetsk region’s defences and Russian troops have spent months pushing towards it, taking almost 400 square miles since the fall of the key city of Avdiivka to the southeast in February. This attack accelerated over the summer, though at great cost in personnel to the Russians.
DeepState, a Ukrainian war tracker, puts Russian forces now within just two miles of the city.
Mr Syrskryi described the battles in Pokrovsk as “extremely tough”, adding that Russian forces were “prevailing”.
“The Russian occupiers are throwing forward all available forces, trying to break through the defence of our troops,” he wrote on the Telegram messenger.
Two women pulled from rubble 7 hours after Russian missile strike
Two women pulled from rubble 7 hours after airstrike by Putin’s forces on Ukraine
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Ukraine loses ground near Pokrovsk with Russian force within 3 km of strategic hub
Russian troops destroyed or captured several Ukrainian positions near the eastern city of Pokrovsk, Kyiv’s military has said, as Moscow bears down on the strategic logistics hub that is home to a unique Ukrainian coking mine.
After months of accelerating advances towards Pokrovsk, Moscow’s forces are now as close as 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) from the southern outskirts of the city, according to Ukraine‘s DeepState, which maps the front lines using open sources.
“As a result of prolonged clashes, two of our positions were destroyed, one was lost. Currently, measures are being taken to restore positions,” Nazar Voloshyn, Ukraine‘s military spokesman for the eastern front, said in televised comments.
Pokrovsk, situated about 18 kilometres (11 miles) from the boundary of Ukraine‘s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, has for months been the area of the fiercest battles in Russia’s 33-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In October and November, the Russian military advanced towards the city at its fastest rate since the early months of the war, analysts said. Ukraine, which has been on the back foot since its failed 2023 counteroffensive, says Russia has been sustaining some of its heaviest losses of the war to date.
Russia teams up with BRICS to create AI alliance, Putin says
President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would develop artificial intelligence with BRICS partners and other countries, a bid to challenge the dominance of the United States in one of the most disruptive technologies of the 21st Century.
“I am confident that the international alliance of national associations and development institutes in the field of AI of BRICS countries and other interested states will give a significant boost to such cooperation,” Putin told an AI conference in Moscow.
“We will launch this alliance today,” he said.
Russia’s largest lender Sberbank said that the new AI Alliance Network would include national AI associations from China, ranked as one of the world’s top two AI powers, along with Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, in a partnership.
Russia tells its citizens to avoid travel to the West
Russia has asked its citizens to not visit the United States, Canada and some EU countries in coming weeks over increasingly “confrontational” ties.
Russians abroad risk being “hunted” down by US authorities, officials in Moscow claimed yesterday.
“In the context of the increasing confrontation in Russian-American relations, which are teetering on the verge of rupture due to the fault of Washington, trips to the United States of America privately or out of official necessity are fraught with serious risks,” Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, told a news briefing.
“We urge you to continue to refrain from trips to the United States of America and its allied satellite states, including, first of all, Canada and, with a few exceptions, European Union countries, during these holidays,” she said.
Both Moscow and Washington say their citizens have been wrongfully imprisoned and their diplomats harassed increasingly as relations soured, though they both defend convictions by their own justice systems.
Russian and US diplomats say the bilateral relationship is worse than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to nuclear war.
Photos: Residents in Pokrovsk live under Russian threat as war escalates
Zelensky says Nato protections could be applied to only Ukraine-controlled territory at first
Volodymyr Zelensky has said an invitation to join Nato should be issued for all of Ukraine but the alliance’s norms – such as mutually assured protections from attack – could initially apply only to government-controlled territory, with subsequent extensions to other areas if they are eventually recovered from Russia.
Talking to the US network CBN News, Mr Zelensky said that the invitation, which Ukraine has urged Nato to extend as soon as possible, should be formally “issued for all Ukraine - its internationally recognised borders”.
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