Finland is investigating the possible Christmas Day “sabotage” of an undersea power cable linking the country with Estonia under the Baltic Sea.
Electricity transmission between Finland and Estonia through the Estlink 2 connection was cut at 12:26pm (1026 GMT) local time on Wednesday, according to Finnish grid operator Fingrid.
“The possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out,” said Arto Pakhin, Fingrid’s operations manager, to public broadcaster Yle.
An airliner that crashed, killing 38 people, on Wednesday may have been shot down by Russian defences, pro-Kremlin media and independent experts said.
Images of the fuselage of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane showed holes resembling shrapnel or bullet marks, casting doubt on the original official explanation of a collision with birds. Hitting birds would usually result in a landing as soon as possible, an expert said, but the plane crashed hundreds of miles away.
❗️/1. Russian air defense most likely caused the crash of an Embraer 190 passenger plane during UAV attack on Chechnya:
An Embraer 190 passenger plane belonging to Azerbaijan Airlines crashed this morning. 67 passengers of which 5 crew members were on board. 32 people survived… pic.twitter.com/qkiSaZlw1Z
— Special Kherson Cat (@bayraktar_1love) December 25, 2024
Russia has launched a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system and cities in its eastern region.
A barrage of cruise and ballistic missiles hit Kharkiv on Wednesday morning, Ukraine’s energy minister and local officials said.
Ukrainian air forces said Kharkiv was attacked by ballistic missiles and Governor Oleh Vasyliovych Syniehubov said on the Telegram messaging app that there were “damages to civilian non-residential infrastructure”.
Ukraine mounted its first robot-only assault on a Russian position pushing back military forces despite being heavily outnumbered.
Kyiv’s forces used dozens of remote-controlled vehicles mounted with machine guns as well as unmanned kamikaze drones in the raid near the Ukrainian-held town of Lyptsi, the Ukrainian military said.
The assault also used aerial surveillance and mine-laying drones in supporting roles.
The Ministry of Defense has codified and approved for operation the Ukrainian robotic combat complex on a tracked platform equipped with a Browning 12.7 mm machine gun – the Droid TW 12.7.https://t.co/hakMtfwd65 pic.twitter.com/bOBKVP9SI7
— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) December 9, 2024
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose near-three-year defensive war against the Russian invasion has been massively underwritten by Western allies, has developed a habit of biting the hand that feeds, the NATO Secretary General says.
Swedish police were invited aboard a Chinese vessel in the Baltic Sea on Thursday in order to observe a probe being carried out by Beijing into two severed undersea cables.
The telecom cables – one linking Finland and Germany, the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania – were damaged in mid-November off the coast of Denmark but in Swedish territorial waters.
The Chinese ship, the Yi Peng 3, had been tracked sailing above the cables at the time they were cut, and has remained anchored at the location since November 19.
President Zelensky has admitted that Ukraine’s armed forces are unable to drive out Russian troops from Crimea and other occupied territories in Ukraine.
Although he said that Ukraine would never recognise Russian rule, Zelensky said that only diplomatic pressure could force Moscow to withdraw its occupying army.
“We cannot give up our territories. The Ukrainian constitution forbids us to do so. De facto, these territories are now controlled by the Russians. We do not have the strength to recover them,” he told the French newspaper Le Parisien.
A high-ranking general in the Russian armed forces and his assistant have been killed in Moscow by Ukraine’s security service, a Ukrainian source has told the BBC.
Lt Gen Igor Kirillov, head of the Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defence Forces (NBC), was outside a residential block early on Tuesday when a device hidden in a scooter was detonated remotely, Russia’s Investigative Committee (SK) said.
⚡️ JUST IN: The moment of the explosion that killed General Kirillov and his driver this morning in Moscow
The explosives were placed in an electric scooter parked near the door.
At least 10 apartments were damaged by the explosion: windows, loggias and balconies were hit. The… pic.twitter.com/efptFrXfr8
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) December 17, 2024
A steady drip of shocking stories about corruption has fueled anger among voters
Perhaps all political careers must end, inevitably, in failure. But few politicians have had careers as meteoric, as surprising, as consequential or as heroic as that of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. In just five years he has gone from TV comedian to victor of the biggest presidential landslide in his country’s history to inspiring wartime leader who impressed the world with his resolve and personal bravery. But now with the war entering its third (and probably last) winter, Zelensky’s extraordinary story as Ukraine’s leader has reached its final chapter.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. He further reported 370,000 cases of battlefield medical assistance for the wounded, though he stressed that “approximately half of the soldiers wounded in action are later returning to the battlefield”, and that the data includes “light or repeat injuries”.
The outlines of President-elect Donald Trump’s initial efforts to end the war in Ukraine from his visit to Europe last week are starting to emerge for the first time. The main takeaway: Europe would have to shoulder most of the burden of supporting Kyiv with troops to oversee a cease-fire and weapons to deter Russia.
At a meeting in Paris on Dec. 7, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron that he doesn’t support Ukrainian membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but that he wanted to see a strong, well-armed Ukraine emerge from any cessation of fighting, according to officials briefed on the meeting.
Trump said that Europe should play the main role in defending and supporting Ukraine and that he wanted European troops present in Ukraine to monitor a cease-fire, according to the officials. He hasn’t ruled out U.S. support for the arrangement, although no U.S. troops would be involved, the officials said.
KYIV, Ukraine — On February 24, 2022, I woke up to a phone call from a friend. “It’s started,” he said.
“What started?” I asked. “The war,” he replied. Only then did I hear the sound of the sirens in Kyiv signaling that yes, Russia had begun an invasion, announcing itself with bombs and shellings.
Every hour of that first day brought fresh news of air strikes—in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Kramatorsk, Odessa. By evening, president Volodymyr Zelensky reported that 137 Ukrainians had died. He also imposed martial law that day.
Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed that more than 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured during the war with Russia.
He admitted the previously top-secret casualty numbers a few hours after Donald Trump released the data as evidence that the war between Ukraine and Russia needed to stop.
Mr Zelensky has previously insisted that Ukrainian casualty figures are strictly confidential and could not be released because they may undermine public morale.
Donald Trump has called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, a day after meeting the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Paris, claiming Kyiv “would like to make a deal” to end its war with Russia.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said both sides had suffered enormous losses in the war – which he claimed on the US election campaign trail he would be able to end “in 24 hours” if elected. Trump has already appointed the retired army general Keith Kellogg as his Russia and Ukraine envoy, tasked with ending the war.
“There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed,” Trump said on Sunday.
