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>--Russia's Ministry of Defence said on Monday it had downed nine Ukrainian drones that tried to attack part of the infrastructure of the TurkStream gas pipeline, through which Russian gas flows to Turkey and Europe. It said the attack was aimed against a compressor station in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, but the facility was working normally and there were no casualties.<br>--South Korea said some 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed and 2,700 wounded fighting in Russia's war against Ukraine.<br>--Russia's defence ministry said it captured the east Ukrainian mining village of Pishchane, around 8km (5 miles) south-west of Pokrovsk, home to one of Ukraine's most important coal mines and where Russian troops heave reached the outskirts. <br>--The defence ministry said its soldiers had captured the Ukrainian village of Yantarne in the eastern Donetsk region and the village of Kalinove in the northeastern Kharkiv region.<br>--Russian shelling damaged electrical equipment in southern Ukraine's Kherson region, leaving about 23,000 homes without power, according to the local military administration. The Russian military shelled social infrastructure and residential areas of the region's settlements, in particular, damaging 2 multistorey buildings and 8 private houses, Kherson's governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram.<br>--Russia's defence ministry also said that its forces launched 139 missile, drone and artillery attacks on Ukrainian military targets within 24 hours.<br>--Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was ready to hand over captured North Korean soldiers to Pyongyang in exchange for the return of Ukrainian prisoners of War held by Russia.<br>--The Kremlin said on Monday that the latest round of US sanctions on the Russian energy sector risked destabilising global markets. -It is clear that the United States will continue to try to undermine the positions of our companies in non-competitive ways, but we expect that we will be able to counteract this,- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. -At the same time, of course, such decisions cannot but lead to a certain destabilisation of international energy markets, oil markets. We will very carefully monitor the consequences and configure the work of our companies in order to minimise the consequences of these … illegal decisions.-<br>--Sweden announced it would send three warships and an ASC 890 surveillance aircraft to the Baltic Sea in the latest response to allegations an oil tanker from Russia's so-called shadow fleet was involved in sabotaging undersea power and telecommunications cables.<br>--Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has offered to host a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and United States President-elect Donald Trump, according to the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation. Trump's pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told US news network ABC that preparations are under way for a meeting between Trump and Putin.<br>--Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto said his country would hold talks with regional allies to work out its response to new US sanctions on Russian oil and gas, which raise severe challenges for central Europe.<br>Advertisement<br>--An emergency task force arrived in Russia's southern Krasnodar region, more than a month after two storm-stricken Russian oil tankers caused an an oil spill in the Kerch Strait, which separates Krasnodar from the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, which Russia occupied and annexed in 2014.</div>