Russia - Ukraine War Update
<div class=\"default-font-wrapper\" style=\"line-height: 1;font-size: 12pt; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">Russia - Ukraine War Update <br id=\"isPasted\"><br>--Russian and Ukrainian forces have once again engaged in fierce battles around the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine's General Staff said that 35 Russian attacks were reported around the city on Wednesday. 'Three Russian armies are concentrated here against us,' Ukraine's regional commander Viktor Trehubov was quoted as saying.<br>--Russia launched a huge Christmas Day attack on Ukraine with cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as drones.<br>The Russian attack wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in the region of Dnipropetrovsk, the governors there said.<br>--Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the 'inhumane' attack from Russia, which included more than 170 missiles and drones, some of which knocked out power in several regions of the country.<br>--United States President Joe Biden said the 'outrageous attack was designed to cut off the Ukrainian people's access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardise the safety of its grid'.<br>--United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Russia's strikes on Ukraine's energy grid, saying there was 'no respite even at Christmas'.<br>--Russia meanwhile said five people were killed by Ukrainian missile strikes and from a falling drone in the border region of Kursk and North Ossetia in the Caucasus.<br>--Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Australia had contacted Moscow about the possible capture by the Russian army of an Australian citizen fighting with Ukrainian forces and that it was looking into the matter.<br>--Biden said that he had asked the US Department of Defense to continue its surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, after condemning Russia's Christmas Day attack on Ukraine.<br>--Pope Francis called for 'arms to be silenced' around the world in his Christmas address, appealing for peace in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan as he denounced the 'extremely grave' humanitarian situation in Gaza.<br>--Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was released in a prisoner swap by Moscow in August, has been placed on Russia's 'wanted' list, according to an Interior Ministry database seen by the AFP news agency. Yashin, 41, was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison at the end of 2022 for denouncing 'the murder of civilians' in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.<br>--Russia's Foreign Ministry accused NATO of trying to turn Moldova into a logistical centre to supply the Ukrainian army and of seeking to bring the Western alliance's military infrastructure closer to Russia.<br>--Arto Pahkin, the head of operations of the Finnish electricity grid, told the country's public broadcaster Yle that 'the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out' after an undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia broke down. It is the latest in a series of incidents involving telecom cables and energy pipelines in the Baltic Sea.<br>--A 'terrorist act' sank the Russian cargo ship that went down in international waters in the Mediterranean this week, the Russian state-owned company that owns the vessel said. The Oboronlogistika company said it 'thinks a targeted terrorist attack was committed on December 23, 2024, against the Ursa Major', without indicating who may have been behind the act or why.<br>--The Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet that crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people, was earlier diverting from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks. Authorities in two Russian regions adjacent to Chechnya, Ingushetia and North Ossetia, reported drone strikes on Wednesday morning.<br>--Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends the plenary session of the 31st Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial summit in Ta'Qali, Malta, on December 5, 2024.<br>--Foreign Minister Lavrov: If Trump is serious, so are we<br>--Lavrov says any Ukraine peace deal must be legally watertight<br>--Reuters reports that Russia is willing to work with Donald Trump's incoming administration to improve relations if the U.S. has serious intentions to do so but it is up to Washington to make the first move, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.<br>--Trump, who will return as U.S. president on Jan. 20, styles himself as a master dealmaker and has vowed to swiftly end the war in Ukraine but not set out how he might achieve that beyond getting President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to agree to end the fighting.<br>--Trump's designated Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, told Fox News on Dec. 18 that both sides wereready for peace talks and that Trump was in a perfect position to execute a deal to end the war.<br>--'If the signals that are coming from the new team in Washington to restore the dialogue that Washington interrupted after the start of a special military operation (war in Ukraine), are serious, of course, we will respond to them,' Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.<br>--Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions of people and triggered the biggest rupture in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.<br>--U.S. officials cast Russia as a corrupt autocracy that is the biggest nation-state threat to the United States and has meddled in U.S. elections, jailed U.S. citizens on false charges and perpetrated sabotage campaigns against U.S. allies.<br>--Russian officials say the U.S. is a declining power that has repeatedly ignored Russia's interests since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union, while sowing discord inside Russia in an attempt to divide Russian society and further U.S. interests.<br>--Reuters reported last month that Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO. Russia holds about 20% of Ukrainian territory.<br>--Lavrov said Russia saw no point in a weak ceasefire to freeze the war but Moscow wants a legally binding deal for a lasting peace that would ensure the security of both Russia and its neighbours.<br>--Putin says an arrogant West led by the United States ignored Russia's post-Soviet interests, tried to pull Ukraine into its orbit since 2014 and then used Ukraine to fight a proxy war aimed at weakening - and ultimately destroying - Russia.<br>--After a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine's 2014 Maidan Revolution aimed at closer Western ties, Russia annexed the Crimea region and began giving military support to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.<br>--The West says Russia's invasion of Ukraine was an imperial-style land grab by Moscow that has strengthened the NATO military alliance and weakened Russia.<br>--Ukraine's Zelenskiy said on Sunday that its membership of NATO is 'achievable', but that Kyiv will have to fight to persuade Western allies to make it happen.</div>