Summary of the day
Hello -
Here are the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war:
Estonia’s government held an extraordinary meeting on as investigators try to find out what disrupted a Baltic Sea power cable bringing electricity from Finland, which went down just after noon on Wednesday.
A Russian drone attack on the central market in the Ukrainian town of Nikopol injured eight on Thursday morning, local authorities said. Seven of those injured were hospitalised after the strike damaged multiple stalls at the market.
The Ukrainian military said that its air force had carried out a strike on a military industrial facility in Russia’s Rostov region over the past few days. The facility in the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky was used to produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles used in Russian attacks on Ukraine,
The Ukrainian military said that it shot down 20 drones out of 31 launched by Russia overnight. Of the 31 drones, 11 “imitator-drones” did not reach their targets due to active engagement from the Ukrainian military, it added.
Readiness to support Ukraine “until it wins” has fallen sharply across western Europe at a critical time for the country, a survey has suggested. December polling by YouGov in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the UK found support for an alternative resolution to the conflict – a negotiated end to the fighting, even if that left Russia in control of parts of Ukraine – is now the preferred option.
Russia and Kazakhstan have sought to temper speculation about the cause of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash, with the Kremlin urging people to wait for the results of the investigation. Four sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that a Russian air defence downed the plane.
Russia’s top security agency said that it arrested several suspects accused of involvement in an alleged Ukrainian plot to assassinate senior military officers, an announcement that follows the killing of a top Russian general last week.
The Russian defence ministry claimed that Russian forces have captured a village of Hihant in eastern Ukraine, the RIA news agency has reported. Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield reports from either side.
Thanks for following the blog today. We’re closing it for now, but we’ll be back tomorrow to keep you in the loop.
Finnish authorities have said that they are investigating an oil tanker that sailed from a Russian port for the “sabotage” of a power cable linking Finland and Estonia that was damaged the previous day.
Reuters reports:
On Christmas Day, the Estlink 2 submarine cable that carries electricity from Finland to Estonia was disconnected from the grid, just over a month after two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.
Robin Lardot of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said a probe for “aggravated sabotage” had been opened into the oil tanker Eagle S, that flies under the flag of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific.
Sami Rakshit from Director General of Finnish Customs said:
The assumption at the moment is that it is a shadow fleet vessel and the cargo was unleaded petrol loaded in a Russian port.
The shadow fleet refers to the ships which transport embargoed Russian crude and oil products.
Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, posted on X:
We monitored the situation closely yesterday.
The risks posed by the Russian shadow fleet must be ruled out.
The Eagle S is bound for Port Said in Egypt and still located in the Gulf of Finland, according to the Marine Traffic website.
Police suspect that the oil tanker’s anchor might have damaged the power cable.
Four sources with knowledge of the investigation have told Reuters that the Azerbaijan Airlines flight that crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday was downed by a Russian air defence system.
An Embraer passenger jet crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38 people, after diverting from an area of Russia in which Moscow has used air defence systems against Ukrainian drone strikes in recent months.
However Mangystau Regional Transport Prosecutor Abylaibek Ordabayev said the Kazakh investigation has not yet come to any conclusions.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that France had tried to establish “dialogue” with Moscow on Ukraine but without Kyiv’s participation - a claim that was dismissed by Paris.
AFP reports:
Western countries have called for a united front in support for Ukraine and have constantly said that no decisions could be taken without Ukraine’s agreement.
Lavrov said at a press conference:
On several occasions our French colleagues have appealed through confidential channels: ’Let us help, let’s have a dialogue on the Ukrainian question’. Without Ukraine.
He said Russian officials were “ready to listen”.
Lavrov did not say when these appeals might have happened or reveal any more details about the supposed contact.
A French diplomatic source told AFP:
The Russian authorities are accustomed to making intemperate remarks aimed at exploiting a war of aggression for which they bear full responsibility.
As France has reiterated since the beginning of the war, it is up to Ukraine, the aggressed country, to define the time and conditions under which they wish to enter into a negotiation process.
Russia’s aviation watchdog has said that all four Moscow airports and the airport in Kaluga, 160km (100 miles) southwest of Moscow, have just been closed temporarily, without giving the reason.
The Rosaviatsia statement said:
Aircraft crews, air traffic controllers and airport services are taking all necessary measures to ensure flight safety.
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Estonian government to hold extraordinary meeting as investigators try to find out why disrupted Baltic Sea power cable
Estonia’s government was to hold an extraordinary meeting on Thursday as investigators try to find out what disrupted a Baltic Sea power cable bringing electricity from Finland, Estonia’s prime minister said Thursday.
The Estlink-2 power went down just after noon on Wednesday. Officials have been on edge about undersea cables in the wake of damage to two data cables in November and Nord Stream gas pipeline, both of which have been termed sabotage.
“Despite holidays, many people in Estonia and Finland have been working for the last two days to identify the problem for the Estlink-2 disconnection,” prime minister Kristen Michal said on X. “My government will hold an extraordinary meeting this afternoon. We are in close contact with our Nordic-Baltic colleagues.”
Two data cables – one running between Finland and Germany and the other between Lithuania and Sweden – were severed in November. Germany’s defence minister said officials had to assume the incident was “sabotage,” but without providing evidence or saying who might have been responsible. The remark came during a speech in which he discussed hybrid warfare threats from Russia.
The Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that once brought natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022. Authorities have termed it sabotage and launched criminal probes.
The Estlink-2 cable was down for much of this year to repair damage from a short circuit that may have been caused by the cable’s complex positioning, ERR reported.
Estonian network operator Elering says there was enough spare capacity to meet power needs on the Estonian side, public broadcaster ERR said on its website
Readiness to support Ukraine “until it wins” has fallen sharply across western Europe at a critical time for the country, a survey has suggested.
December polling by YouGov in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark and the UK found public desire to stand by Ukraine until victory – even if that meant prolonging the war – had slumped in all seven countries over the past 12 months, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent Jon Henley writes.
Support for an alternative resolution to the conflict – a negotiated end to the fighting, even if that left Russia in control of parts of Ukraine – had increased in every country, the survey found, and was the preferred option in four of them.
There was some unhappiness at the idea of an imposed settlement that would involve Ukraine ceding territory to Russia, but also widespread belief that the new US president would abandon Ukraine after his inauguration on 20 January.
Russia and Kazakhstan have sought to temper speculation about the cause of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash, with the Kremlin urging people to wait for the results of the investigation, writes the Guardian’s European community affairs correspondent Ashifa Kassam and Pjotr Sauer, the Russia affairs correspondent.
A Ukrainian national security official has claimed that the crash, which killed 38 people on Christmas Day, was caused by Russian air defence fire.
The plane, which was flying from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to the Russian city of Grozny in Chechnya, came down in a field near Aktau in Kazakhstan after veering hundreds of miles off its planned route. Twenty-nine people survived.
Here are the latest images coming out of Ukraine:
Russia is willing to work with Donald Trump’s incoming administration to improve relations but it is up to Washington to make the first move, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
Reuters reports:
Trump, who returns as president on 20 January, 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.
Lavrov told reporters in Moscow:
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.
But the Americans broke (off) the dialogue, so they should make the first move.
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Russia’s top security agency has said that it has arrested several suspects accused of involvement in an alleged Ukrainian plot to assassinate senior military officers, an announcement that follows the killing of a top Russian general last week.
Associated Press reports:
The Federal Security Service, a top KGB successor known under its Russian acronym FSB, said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that it had arrested four Russians accused of making preparations to kill senior Defense Ministry officials.
The FSB said that the suspected organisers of the attacks were planning to kill one of the senior officers using a remotely controlled car bomb. It added that another top military official was to be assassinated by an explosive device hidden in an envelope. The agency didn’t name the military officers who were targeted in the alleged plot.
The FSB released a video showing the arrest and interrogation of the suspects, who weren’t named.
Eight injured in Russian drone attack
A Russian drone attack on the central market in the Ukrainian town of Nikopol injured eight on Thursday morning, local authorities said.
Seven of those injured were hospitalised after the strike damaged multiple stalls at the market, Dnipropetrovsk governor Serhiy Lysak wrote via the Telegram messaging app.
The drone strike comes after Russia’s Christmas Day attack on the country’s energy system killed one person in the region.
The Ukrainian military said on Thursday that it shot down 20 drones out of 31 launched by Russia overnight. Of the 31 drones, 11 “imitator drones” did not reach their targets due to active engagement from the Ukrainian military, it added.
The Russian defence ministry has claimed that Russian forces have captured a village of Hihant in eastern Ukraine, the RIA news agency has reported.
Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield reports from either side.
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Azerbaijan is observing a nationwide day of mourning for the victims of the air crash that killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured as speculation mounted about a possible cause of the crash that remained unknown.
The Associated Press reports:
Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons yet unclear and crashed while making an attempt to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan.
The plane went down about 3 kilometers or 2 miles from Aktau after crossing the Caspian Sea. Cellphone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball.
Azerbaijan on Thursday observed a nationwide day of mourning for the victims of the air crash that killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured as speculation mounted about a possible cause of the crash that remained unknown.
Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons yet unclear and crashed while making an attempt to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan after flying east across the Caspian Sea.
Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said that preliminary information indicated that the pilots diverted to Aktau after a bird strike led to an emergency on board.
According to Kazakh officials, those aboard the plane included 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhs and three Kyrgyzstan nationals.
As the official crash investigation started, theories abounded about a possible cause, with some commentators alleging that holes seen in the plane’s tail section possibly indicate that it could have come under fire from Russian air defense systems fending off a Ukrainian drone attack.
Ukrainian drones had previously attacked Grozny, the provincial capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, and other regions in the country’s North Caucasus. Some Russian media claimed that another drone attack on Chechnya happened on Wednesday, although it wasn’t officially confirmed.
Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security firm based in the United Kingdom, warned its clients that the “Azerbaijan Airlines flight was likely shot down by a Russian military air-defense system.” Osprey provides analysis for carriers still flying into Russia after Western airlines halted their flights during the war.
Osprey CEO Andrew Nicholson said that the company had issued more than 200 alerts regarding drone attacks and air defense systems in Russia during the war.
Ukraine claims it struck military facility in Russia
The Ukrainian military has said that its air force had carried out a strike on a military industrial facility in Russia’s Rostov region over the past few days.
The facility in the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky was used to produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles used in Russian attacks on Ukraine, the Ukrainian military said. It did not give a date for the attack or say what damage was caused.
Russia thinks a weak ceasefire to freeze the war in Ukraine would be futile and counterproductive, and instead would rather a legally binding deal for a lasting peace that would ensure the security of both Russia and its neighbours, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.
He said he suspected a weak truce would be used by the west to re-arm Ukraine, adding:
A truce is a path to nowhere.
We need final legal agreements that will fix all the conditions for ensuring the security of the Russian Federation and, of course, the legitimate security interests of our neighbours.
He added that Moscow wanted the legal documents drafted in such a way to ensure “the impossibility of violating these agreements.”
He also said that Ukraine repeatedly hits civilian targets in Russia with Western missiles and drones and Moscow will respond. Russia targets only military facilities and infrastructure and “it’s not in our rules to strike civilian targets,” he added.
Separately, Lavrov said that the new ruler of Syria had called relations with Russia long standing and strategic and that Moscow shared this assessment.
Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said on Monday that Russia was in contact with Syria’s new administration at both a diplomatic and military level.
Peskov added that the investigation into the cause of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash is underway and it is wrong to speculate before it gives its conclusions.
An Embraer EMBR3.SA passenger jet crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38 people, after diverting from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks.
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Opening summary
Hello –
Welcome to the Guardian’s blog covering the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Ukrainian military has said that it shot down 20 drones out of 31 launched by Russia overnight. Of the 31 drones, 11 “imitator-drones” did not reach their targets due to active engagement from the Ukrainian military, it added.
Here are yesterday’s key developments, after Russia launched a Christmas Day attack against some of Ukraine’s cities.
Joe Biden has asked the US defence department to continue its surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, describing Russia’s Christmas Day attack against some of Ukraine’s cities and its energy infrastructure as “outrageous”.
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”.
The attack left half a million people in Kharkiv region without heating, in temperatures just a few degrees Celsius above zero, while there were blackouts in the capital, Kyiv, and elsewhere.
Ukraine’s air defences downed 59 of 78 Russian missiles and 54 of 102 drones launched overnight and on Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian military said.
British prime minister Keir Starmer has also condemned the Russian attack launched on Ukraine’s energy grid, which killed one person.
Nato member Romania said it had not detected any Russian missile passing through its airspace to target Ukraine, as claimed by Kyiv.
Russia’s Federal Security Service claimed on Thursday that it had foiled several plots by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill high-ranking Russian military officers and their families in Moscow. It claimed four Russian citizens allegedly involved in the plots had been detained. Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service has claimed responsibility for the killing of Igor Kirillov, chief of Russia’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection troops, who died after a bomb attached to an electric scooter exploded outsided his apartment building on 17 December.
A Russian cargo ship that sank on Tuesday in the Mediterranean Sea was the target of an “act of terrorism”, according to the vessel’s owner. The Ursa Major sank while it was sailing through international waters between Spain and Algeria, leaving two crew members missing. The Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said Russia faced “systemic problems” in maintaining its fleet but gave no indication that Kyiv was involved in the incident.
Falling debris from a Ukrainian drone that was shot down caused an explosion and a fatal fire in a shopping centre in the city of Vladikavkaz in Russia’s North Ossetia region, the local governor said on Wednesday. One woman was reported to have been killed inside the shopping centre.
Russia’s foreign ministry said Australia had been in contact about the possible capture by the Russian army of an Australian citizen fighting with Ukrainian forces. Oscar Jenkins was reportedly captured by Russian soldiers while fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a call with the Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, where he thanked Japan’s government for a decision to transfer an additional $3bn secured from frozen Russian assets. The Ukrainian leader also thanked Japan for the total $12bn in humanitarian and financial aid provided to Ukraine, according to a readout of the Wednesday call.
We’ll be keeping you updated with all the most important happenings throughout the rest of the day.
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