Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump sympathises with Putin’s stance on Nato as Kursk battle rages
Trump said he ‘understands’ Russia’s feelings about Ukraine in Nato bloc
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump says he sympathises with Vladimir Putin’s position that Ukraine should not be part of Nato, incorrectly accusing Joe Biden of changing US policy on the issue.
“A big part of the problem is, Russia – for many, many years, long before Putin – said, ‘You could never have Nato involved with Ukraine.’ Now, they’ve said that. That’s been, like, written in stone,” Mr Trump said, speaking at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
“And somewhere along the line Biden said, ‘No. They should be able to join Nato’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.”
Nato’s official position since 2008 has been that Ukraine should work towards membership, and that remains the case. No new invitation to join Nato has been offered, despite calls from Kyiv for the alliance to do so.
On the battlefront, Ukraine said its forces were “commencing new offensive actions” in Russia’s western Kursk region, finally confirming the renewed assault first reported over the weekend.
And in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv said it was still clinging on to part of Kurakhove, a strategic town that Russia claims to have captured.
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Ukraine downs 28 Russian drones overnight, military says
The Ukrainian military shot down 28 Russian drones overnight, it said this morning.
Of the 38 drones launched, 10 did not reach their targets, the air force said.
Macron urges realism from Ukraine over territory
French president Emmanuel Macron has stressed the need for “realistic discussions on territorial questions” between Ukraine and invading power Russia saying that “such negotiations can only be conducted by Ukrainians themselves”.
Speaking on Monday in a new year’s address from the Elysee Palace, Macron called on the US to “help change the nature of the situation and convince Russia to come to the negotiating table”.
“The Europeans will have to construct security guarantees for Ukraine, which will be primarily their responsibility,” he said. Mr Macron countered Trump’s campaign pledge to reach a quick peace settlement, warning: “There is no quick and easy solution in Ukraine.
“The new American president himself knows the United States has no chance of winning anything if Ukraine loses,” he said. “The credibility of the West will be shattered if we compromise because of fatigue.”
Kyiv’s allies back new Kursk offensive: ‘Legitimate targets'
The United States, Britain and the European Union have reaffirmed their support for Kyiv in the wake of its new offensive inside Russia’s Kursk.
“Ukraine has the right to defend itself, and under international law, this right extends beyond its borders,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a statement to Reuters.
“Moscow’s unlawful war against Ukraine has included numerous Russian attacks originating from the Kursk region. So Russian military forces there are legitimate targets under international law.”
A US state department spokesperson said: “We are committed to putting Ukraine in the strongest possible position on the battlefield, including by surging security assistance and utilising all available resources authorised by the Congress.”
Britain said it would support Ukraine for “as long as it takes”.
What does Ukraine stand to gain with latest Kursk counterattack?
What Kyiv stands to gain and lose in surprise counter-attack on Russian soil
Russian military commentators say they are ‘worried’ about the multipronged Ukrainian attack in the border region of Kursk
West trying to smother Russia, Russian orthodox patriarch says
The patriarch of Russia’s orthodox church, celebrating Christmas alongside Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, claimed that the Western world despised Russia and its “alternative path of civilised development”.
Orthodox Christians in Russia celebrate Christmas today, according to the Julian calendar.
Patriarch Kirill, an enthusiastic backer of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, blessed icons and crosses that were to be engraved with the president’s initials and sent to servicemen in the 34-month-old war in Ukraine, Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying.
“They hate us because we are offering a different, alternative path of civilised development,” Kirill said at Christ the Saviour Cathedral, which was rebuilt on the site of a swimming pool in the 1990s after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin levelled it in the 1930s.
The West was in moral collapse, he claimed, while Russia showed the world how to blend science, culture, education and faith.
“Physically, they cannot really smother us, though they try through different types of slander and the creation of blocs of some sort intended to weaken Russia,” he said. “Nothing will work because God is with us.”
Russian drone kills one, injures nine in passenger bus in Kherson
A Russian drone attacked a civilian passenger bus in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson yesterday, killing at least one person and injuring nine more, the Kherson regional governor said.
The bus with shattered windows and pools of blood on its floor could be seen on a video from the site, shared by the governor alongside his statement on Telegram.
A 49-year-old man was killed, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
Civilians in Kherson region, which Russian forces partially occupy, and its capital constantly come under Russian drone attacks. Local authorities report casualties from such strikes on an almost daily basis.
Russia claims it has captured another town in eastern Ukraine but Kyiv doesn't confirm the loss
Russia claims it has captured another town in eastern Ukraine but Kyiv doesn't confirm the loss
Russia’s Defense Ministry is claiming that its troops in eastern Ukraine have captured the town of Kurakhove after a monthslong battle
Why is Ukraine fighting to keep a piece of Kursk?
Over the weekend, Ukraine began a new offensive inside Russia to extend its incursion within Kursk oblast, an attack Kyiv has not yet acknowledged.
In a brief remark alluding to the events in Kursk, a senior Ukrainian official said Russia was “getting what it deserves” there.
Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had established a buffer zone and inflicted heavy losses in Kursk, preventing Moscow from deploying its troops in key areas of the eastern front.
Ukraine’s main achievement in the past five months of fighting has been its capture of territory inside Russia’s Kursk region, something it hopes could prove a bargaining chip in possible peace talks.
Independent military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady said Ukraine was trying to hold its pocket of Kursk for as long as possible, even as Russia continued to push deeper into eastern Ukraine.
“There’s a likelihood that we haven’t seen the main thrust of this Ukrainian offensive operation just yet,” he told Reuters. “We are essentially talking about platoon-sized, company-sized assaults with fairly limited gains thus far.” It remained to be seen if Kyiv’s forces could open up another axis of advance, Mr Gady added.
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