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Russian forces have retaken 63.2% of the territory captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region of western Russia, the Russian defence ministry said on Friday.
Reuters could not independently verify the ministry’s statement, which said Russia had recaptured four settlements in the first two weeks of January.
Continue reading...PM visits Kyiv to agree partnership and says Putin shows no signs of wanting to stop ‘unrelenting aggression’
Keir Starmer has announced a “historic” 100-year partnership with Ukraine, saying the UK would support the country “beyond this terrible war” and into a future where it is “free and thriving again”.
Speaking during his first trip to Kyiv as prime minister, Starmer said the unprecedented agreement reflected the “huge affection between our two nations”. He added that “right now Putin shows no signs of wanting to stop” his “unrelenting aggression”.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: Kyiv’s interrogation footage of captured North Korean soldiers leads to questions about what it might do with the soldiers – and what the PoWs might do for them
Good morning. In a grinding war where significant changes at the front are hard to discern, a video released by Ukraine on Sunday is a rare point of focus: it featured two North Korean soldiers, answering questions from their Ukrainian captors, and weighing the circumstances of their presence in a conflict thousands of miles from home.
The video is, perhaps, not militarily significant. But it is a unique insight into one of the more extraordinary aspects of a conflict that has drawn in actors from all over the world, and is a crucible in which every participant is learning how modern wars are fought.
Economy | Rachel Reeves will remain as chancellor until the next general election, Keir Starmer has insisted, as he warned the Treasury would be “ruthless” over public spending cuts to help meet the government’s fiscal rules.
Gaza | Joe Biden has said his administration is on the brink of sealing a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that could pause the war after more than 14 months of fighting. Biden administration officials have said they believe the deal may be concluded before Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.
US politics | Donald Trump would have been convicted of crimes over his failed attempt to cling to power in 2020 if he had not won the presidential election in 2024, according to the special counsel who investigated him. Jack Smith’s report detailing his team’s findings about Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy was released early on Tuesday.
UK news | A man accused of driving a young mother to suicide through domestic violence has been found guilty of assault and prolonged controlling behaviour but cleared of her manslaughter. Ryan Wellings, 30, was blamed from “beyond the grave” for the death of his partner, Kiena Dawes. Read more about the case.
‘Forever chemicals’ | The cost of cleaning up toxic forever chemical pollution could reach more than £1.6tn across the UK and Europe over a 20-year period, an annual bill of £84bn, research has found. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are used in everything from cosmetics to nonstick pans but are almost indestructible without human intervention.
[It is] unclear if North Korea will even claim the two captured soldiers as their own, given Moscow and Pyongyang’s refusal to officially admit that North Korean forces have been deployed to Russia. At the same time, Russia could claim them as their own and hand them over to North Korea after they are traded with Ukrainian PoWs.
Continue reading...Azov, a volunteer brigade, plans to form international battalion to boost numbers as Ukraine heads into fourth year of war
Ukraine’s highest profile combat unit is seeking English-speaking recruits at a time when the impending presidency of Donald Trump means that Kyiv is expected to come under intense pressure on the battlefield.
Azov, a volunteer brigade whose decade-old nationalist origins have made it a target of Russian propaganda, plans to form an international battalion to boost its numbers as Ukraine heads into a fourth year of full-scale war.
Continue reading...Footage purports to show Ukrainian armoured columns advancing towards village of Bolshoe Soldatskoe
Ukrainian armed forces began a surprise offensive in Russia’s Kursk region on Sunday, in an apparent attempt to regain the initiative on the battlefield before Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House.
Video showed Ukrainian armoured columns advancing across snowy fields towards the village of Bolshoe Soldatskoe, north-east of the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. Vehicles could also be seen driving through empty rustic settlements.
Continue reading...The US president-elect’s policy on the conflict may prove decisive, but appeasing both sides will be a challenge
A new year in Ukraine began in much the same way as the old one finished: with deadly Russian drone attacks across the country. In Kyiv, one person was killed and at least six others were injured in the first few hours of 2025.
It is Ukraine’s third new year since Russia’s invasion. If 2023 began with hopes high that Ukrainian battlefield gains would push Russia back and lead to an outright victory, by the start of 2024 the Ukrainian army and population were already settled in for the long haul and had few illusions about a quick victory.
Continue reading...Some of the freed Ukrainians had been held since war’s early days, while Russians were captured in Ukraine’s Kursk offensive
Russia and Ukraine have carried out a major prisoner exchange, with at least 150 people from each side returning home before New Year’s Eve, in a swap partly brokered by the United Arab Emirates.
“The return of our people from Russian captivity is always very good news for each of us. And today is one of such days: our team managed to bring 189 Ukrainians home,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a message posted on Telegram on Monday.
Continue reading...Zelenskyy describes cruise and ballistic missile strikes, which caused blackouts in several regions, as ‘inhuman’
Christmas morning in Ukraine was overshadowed by a massive Russian aerial attack using cruise missiles to target energy infrastructure across the country, which Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned as “inhuman”.
“Today, Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack. What could be more inhuman? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones,” the Ukrainian president said on Telegram.
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Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk traveled Saturday to his country’s border with the Russian region of Kaliningrad to inspect progress in the construction of military fortifications along the eastern frontier, calling it “an investment in peace.”
“The better the Polish border is guarded, the more difficult it is to access for those with bad intentions,” Tusk said at a news conference near the village of Dabrowka as he stood in front of concrete anti-tank barriers.
Continue reading...President suggests bringing Kyiv-controlled land into western military pact could stop ‘hot stage’ of war
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested that Ukrainian territory under his control should be taken under the “Nato umbrella” to try to stop the “hot stage” of the war with Russia.
Speaking to Sky News, the Ukrainian president said that such a proposal has “never been considered” by Ukraine because it has never “officially” been offered.
Continue reading...Retired US army general and former Pence aide tapped for newly conceived role to negotiate amid ongoing war
Donald Trump has picked Keith Kellogg to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, a newly conceived role given the ongoing war between the two countries.
Kellogg, an 80-year-old retired US army lieutenant general, would start in the role as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues into its third year.
Continue reading...Casualties include 14 people who have been sent to hospital
Jon Henley is the Guardian’s Europe correspondent
An ultranationalist, Moscow-friendly Nato critic is set to face a centre-right candidate in the runoff of Romania’s presidential elections after a shock first-round result that has upended the country’s politics and could jeopardise its support for Ukraine.
Continue reading...The US doesn’t need to spend more on Ukraine. Britain can bring funding to the table – and help Trump reboot alliances
With Donald Trump the very meaning of words is up for negotiation. What does he really mean when he promises to “build a wall”? When he pledges to end the Russo-Ukrainian war in one day?
His supporters say they don’t take him literally but seriously – but who decides what “serious” is? The very ambiguity can be part of Trump’s appeal. There’s something exhilarating in the sense one is in an exclusive negotiation with the president to define reality. It’s as if he’s welcoming you backstage from the reality show of politics to the discrete board room where meaning is made.
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Russia’s use of an experimental hypersonic missile to hit Ukraine was a “terrible escalation” in the war, German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said on Friday.
The deployment of the new weapon showed “how dangerous this war is”, Scholz said in a speech, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). He added:
That (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has now also used a medium-range missile to strike Ukrainian territory is a terrible escalation.”
Continue reading...Ukrainian president calls testing of nuclear-capable weapon on his country’s territory an ‘international crime’
Vladimir Putin has vowed to launch more strikes using an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile as Ukraine decried the testing of the nuclear-capable weapon on its territory as an “international crime”.
Speaking at a defence conference on Friday, Putin contested US claims that Russia possessed only a “handful” of the high-speed ballistic missiles, saying that the military had enough to continue to test them in “combat conditions” and would put them into serial production.
Continue reading...UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson says Russia’s use of a new ballistic missile is ‘yet another … worrying development’. This blog is now closed
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has issued a statement on X after Vladimir Putin said Russian forces had hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with a new experimental mid-range ballistic missile.
The Russian leader has “admitted” to taking a step “toward escalating and expanding this war” by using a new ballistic missile on Ukraine, Zelenskyy wrote.
Putin struck our city of Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s largest cities. This is a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war — a cynical violation of the UN Charter by Russia.
Putin alone started this war—an entirely unprovoked war — and he is doing everything to prolong it, now for over a thousand days.
Continue reading...UK intelligence services say they are ‘urgently’ looking into Ukraine’s claim, which has been reportedly denied by a Western official
Full story: Russia fired intercontinental ballistic missile at Dnipro, says Ukraine
Hungary announced overnight it is to install an air defence system in the north-eastern part of the country as the threat of an escalation of the Ukraine-Russia war is “greater than ever”, its defence minister said.
Reuters quotes Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky from a video he posted on Facebook saying:
We still trust that there will be peace as soon as possible, through diplomacy instead of a military solution. However, to prepare for all possibilities, I ordered the recently purchased air control and air defence systems and the capabilities built on them to be installed in the north-east. The threat of the escalation of the Ukraine-Russia war is greater than ever.
This is another frankly provocative step in a series of deeply destabilising actions by the Americans and their allies in the North Atlantic alliance in the strategic sphere.
This leads to undermining strategic stability, increasing strategic risks and, as a result, to an increase in the overall level of nuclear danger.
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In a television interview in France, foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s approval of a new nuclear doctrine yesterday as rhetoric, and, Reuters reports, said “We are not intimidated.”
The change in nuclear doctrine yesterday lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, with a significant development being that Russia says it now considers a nuclear response justified if it is on the receiving end of aggression by a non-nuclear power that is being aided by a nuclear power.
Continue reading...Scholz, Starmer, Trudeau and Macron among leaders who say communique finalized by Lula ‘not strong enough’
Ukraine’s western allies have criticised the final G20 communique as inadequate for failing to highlight Russia’s invasion of its neighbour in 2022 as the conflict enters its 1,000th day.
The final agreed text from the summit in Brazil was significantly weaker than that of the previous year, only highlighting humanitarian suffering in Ukraine and the importance of territorial integrity.
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