Closing summary
Belarus’ authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko pardoned 20 more people that rights activists describe as political prisoners, a statement on the president’s website said Saturday. The announcement came amid persistent oppression in the runup to presidential elections next month that are likely to extend Lukashenko’s decades-long rule.
Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologised to Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, for what the Kremlin said was a “tragic incident” involving an Azerbaijan Airlines plane. The Kremlin said: “At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks.” The Kremlin added that “civilian and military specialists” were being questioned.
In the conversation with Putin, Aliyev “emphasised that the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane encountered external physical and technical interference while in Russian airspace, resulting in a complete loss of control”.
Zelenskyy says Russia “must provide clear explanations” for the plane crash. Posting on X, he said: “The key priority now is a thorough investigation to provide answers to all questions about what really happened. Russia must provide clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation.”
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has called for a “swift, independent” probe into the Azerbaijan Airlines crash.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) says it has foiled a plot by Ukraine to kill a high-ranking Russian officer and a pro-Russian war blogger with a bomb hidden in a portable music speaker.
Germany said the suspected sabotage of an undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia this week was a “wake-up call” that demanded new EU sanctions against Russia’s “shadow fleet”, Agence France-Presse reports.
Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service accused American and British spies of trying to provoke attacks against Russian military bases in Syria in a bid to force the evacuation of the bases, the state-run RIA news agency said on Saturday. The SVR gave no evidence for its allegation.
Ukraine said on Saturday it had struck a storage and maintenance depot for long-range Shahed drones in Russia’s Oryol region, adding that this had “significantly reduced” Russia’s ability to launch mass drone attacks on Ukraine.
Russia’s state-owned Gazprom energy corporation has announced that it will halt gas supplies to Moldova from 1 January due to a debt dispute during a state of emergency over energy security in the tiny country. The move comes as several eastern European countries brace for an end to Russian gas supplies, Agence France-Presse reports.
North Korean troops deployed in Russia’s Kursk region are suffering heavy losses and being left unprotected by the Russian forces they are fighting alongside, according to Ukraine, while the US says Russian and North Korean generals see the soldiers as “expendable”.
The United States is expected to announce on Monday that it will send $1.25bn (£994m) in further military assistance to Ukraine. The Biden administration is pushing to get as much aid to Kyiv as possible before the US president, Joe Biden, leaves office on 20 January and is succeeded by the Republican president-elect Donald Trump, who appears to be resistant to such spending to help Ukraine.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it had responded to a new package of EU sanctions by significantly expanding a list of EU and EU member state officials banned from entering Russia.
Italian police said on Saturday that they were investigating cyberattacks claimed by a pro-Russian group targeting several websites including Milan’s airports and the foreign ministry.
Regular flights between Ashgabat and Moscow are to be suspended for a month from 30 December after an Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed in Kazakhstan, the state-run Tass news agency reported on Saturday citing Turkmenistan’s national air carrier.
Russia has lost 784,200 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces reported. This number includes 1,690 Russian casualties over the past day.
The Biden administration pledged to approve fresh military aid to Ukraine, including crucial air defence systems. John Kirby, the US national security communications adviser, said the promised US security assistance package was expected to be announced “in the next couple of days”.
Slovakia has confirmed its readiness to host any peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, despite Kyiv’s accusation that it is playing into the hands of Vladimir Putin. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, said on Facebook late on Friday: “If someone wants to organise peace talks in Slovakia, we will be ready and hospitable.”
In case you missed it earlier, Vladimir Putin has apologised for a “tragic incident” in which an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed on Christmas Day, but stopped short of admitting Russia was responsible.
The Kremlin said in an official statement that Putin had spoken to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, on Saturday by phone in his first comments since the crash, which killed 38 of the 67 people onboard.
“Vladimir Putin apologised for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” the statement said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said he had expressed condolences to President Aliyev and called on Russia for a clearer explanation of the crash.
