Here are the key trends on day 1,036 of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:
The situation for Thursday, December 26th is as follows.
go for it:
- Russian and Ukrainian forces once again fought fierce battles around Pokrovsk, a strategic location in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s Chief of Staff said 35 Russian attacks were reported around the city on Wednesday. “Three Russian armies have gathered here against us,” said Viktor Trekhubov, commander of the Ukrainian region.
- On Christmas Day, Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine using cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones.
- The Russian attack wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one person in the Dnipropetrovsk region, local governors said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned Russia’s “inhumane” attack, which involved more than 170 missiles and drones, some of which knocked out power in several parts of Ukraine.
- “This outrageous attack was designed to cut off access to heat and electricity for the Ukrainian people during the winter and jeopardize the safety of the power grid,” US President Joe Biden said.
- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s energy grid, saying, “There was no respite even for Christmas.”
- Meanwhile, Russia said five people were killed in a Ukrainian missile attack and drone crash near Kursk in the Caucasus and the border with North Ossetia.
- Russia’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that Australia had contacted Moscow about the possibility of Russian forces arresting Australian citizens fighting Ukrainian forces and was investigating the matter.
Military support:
- Biden said he had asked the Pentagon to continue a surge in weapons supplies to Ukraine after condemning Russia’s Christmas attacks on the country.
diplomacy:
- In his Christmas address, Pope Francis condemned the “very serious” humanitarian situation in Gaza, appealed for peace in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan and called on the world to “silence weapons.”
- Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was released in a prisoner swap in Moscow in August, is on Russia’s ‘wanted’ list, according to an Interior Ministry database obtained by AFP. Yashin, 41, was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison at the end of 2022 for condemning the “murders of civilians” in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
Local security:
- Russia’s Foreign Ministry has accused NATO of trying to turn Moldova into a logistics hub for supplies to Ukraine’s army and bringing the Western alliance’s military infrastructure closer to Russia.
- Arto Pahkin, head of Finland’s power grid operations, told Finnish public broadcaster Yle that “the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out” after an undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia failed. This is the latest in a series of accidents involving telecommunications cables and energy pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
- A Russian cargo ship that sank in Mediterranean waters this week was caused by an “act of terrorism,” the Russian state company that owns the vessel said. “We believe there was a targeted terrorist attack targeting Ursa Major on December 23, 2024,” the Oboronlogistika company said, without specifying who was behind the act or why.
- The Azerbaijani Airlines plane that crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau, killing 38 people, was diverting from a Russian region that Moscow had recently defended from a Ukrainian drone attack. Authorities in two Russian regions bordering Chechnya, Ingushetia and North Ossetia reported drone attacks Wednesday morning.
