Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s forces launch 300 missiles and drones in mass air assault on energy grid
Putin ‘is trying to crush our freedom and way of life’, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte says
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Your support makes all the difference.Russia has launched a massive aerial attack against Ukraine, firing 93 missiles and almost 200 drones, as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky described it as one of the heaviest bombardments of the country's energy sector since Russia's full-scale invasion almost three years ago.
Ukrainian defenses shot down 81 missiles, including 11 cruise missiles that were intercepted by F-16 warplanes provided by Western allies earlier this year, Mr Zelensyy said.
Russia is “terrorizing millions of people” with such assaults, he said on his Telegram channel, renewing his plea for international unity against Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“A strong reaction from the world is needed: a massive strike - a massive reaction. This is the only way to stop terror,” Mr Zelensky said.
It comes as Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte warned that Vladimir Putin wants to “wipe Ukraine off the map” and could come after other parts of Europe next as he called for the alliance to adopt a wartime mindset.
Talking to security experts and analysts in Brussels, Mr Rutte warned of the prospect that Russia might try to use “swarms of drones” in Europe after seeing their deadly impact in Ukraine.
Moscow is preparing for a long-term confrontation with Ukraine and Nato, he said, adding that the Russian president “is trying to crush our freedom and way of life”.
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Russia will respond to Ukraine's ATACMS strike, Kremlin says
Russia will respond to Ukraine‘s strike that used US-made ATACMS missiles against Russian territory, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
Russia said on Wednesday that Ukraine had struck a military airfield on the Azov Sea with six US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles, a move that could prompt Moscow to launch another experimental intermediate-range hypersonic missile at Ukraine.
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Oscar-winner Mstyslav Chernov returns to Sundance with a new doc about war in Ukraine
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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.
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