“Ukraine – Russia”

A plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary boss, was brought down by a bomb planted under its wing in a plot orchestrated by Vladimir Putin’s oldest ally, according to a new report.

Nikolai Patrushev, a former KGB officer, the powerful head of Russia’s security council, personally oversaw the planning of the operation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Western intelligence sources and a former Russian intelligence officer.

Prigozhin died when his private jet crashed over Russia’s Tver region on Aug 23, around two months after he led an armed rebellion against Moscow’s military leadership in June, in the biggest threat to Putin’s two-decade rule.

Western nations sent around 200 modern tanks and hundreds more armoured vehicles to Ukraine for its highly anticipated summer offensive.

The hope was that Ukraine could use them to break through the heavily prepared Russian defences.

But within the first week of that offensive the losses started to mount. Around a dozen Leopard tanks and US supplied Bradley armoured vehicles were damaged or destroyed in just one day – trapped in dense Russian minefields backed up by artillery fire.

Ukrainian refugees in Europe will be called up to bolster their country’s army, the Ukrainian defence minister has announced.

Rustem Umerov told the German newspaper Bild that men aged 25 to 60 would receive a summons to report to Ukrainian army recruitment centres. They would face unspecified sanctions if they failed to volunteer.

“We want fairness for everyone because it’s about our own country. We are sending them an invitation,” he said. “We are still discussing what should happen if they don’t come voluntarily.”

President Zelensky holds his annual press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday amid mounting concern over the future of western military aid and Ukraine’s ability to hold back a renewed Russian offensive.

It comes after a Ukrainian general said troops along the entire front line were facing ammunition shortages and had been forced to downsize some operations because of a decrease in foreign assistance.

“The volumes we have are not sufficient, given our needs,” General Tarnavskyi said on Monday.

As they stood shivering on the streets of Kupyansk, just eight kilometres from the Russian front line, Dave and Justin Smith worried that the war they’d come to Ukraine to fight is slowly being lost.

Not because the two Canadians have any doubts about the bravery or the commitment of the Ukrainians they fight alongside, but because they feel the West is becoming distracted and losing interest in the grinding conflict here.

Ukraine has warned it is already being forced to downsize some military operations because of a drop-off in foreign aid.

Top general Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said troops faced ammunition shortages along the “entire front line”, creating a “big problem” for Kyiv.

It comes as billions of dollars of US and EU aid have been held up amid political wrangles.

Ukraine said it hoped to boost its own ammunition industry with western help.

Russia’s red button is in the hands of God

During a service this autumn, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow wished a happy birthday to one of his congregants in the Church of Christ the Saviour. It was no ordinary salutation. Radii Il’kaev, who had just turned 85, was a nuclear physicist who had worked for much of his life in the secretive town of Sarov, the birthplace of the Soviet atomic bomb. Long before it became a centre of nuclear defence, the town had been home to a monastery where one of Russia’s most popular saints — Serafim — had lived and prayed.

Vladimir Putin says more than 600,000 Russian soldiers are in Ukraine, almost twice the number he started the war with. His “freeloading” adversary will soon run out of Western support. And in a sign of his growing confidence at his traditional end-of-year press conference, he insists that Ukraine’s forces have “failed everywhere” in their counter-offensive. But as the snow starts to fill trenches at the end of a second year of fighting he initially expected to be over in days, is he right?

Ukraine faces dwindling reserves of ammunition, personnel and Western support. The counteroffensive it launched six months ago has failed. Moscow, once awash in recriminations over a disastrous invasion, is celebrating its capacity to sustain a drawn-out war.

The war in Ukraine has reached a critical moment, as months of brutal fighting have left Moscow more confident and Kyiv unsure of its prospects.

The Ukrainian president is facing calls for regime change

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Western public has been sold the story of a Ukrainian front united in its unwavering commitment to a total military victory over Russia. Over the past few weeks, however, this narrative has started to crumble.

The Biden administration’s persistent failure to provide Ukraine with the military supplies it requires poses a serious danger of gifting victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

From Abrams tanks to F-16 fighters, US President Joe Biden has constantly dithered over providing Ukraine with the equipment upgrades its forces desperately need if they are to succeed in defending themselves against Russian aggression.

Without vital US military support there is a real danger Ukraine could end up losing this war – not immediately but in the longer term.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington to spell that out, hoping that he can persuade Congress to pass a $60bn aid package that has stalled amid a row over US border security.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, warned Ukraine is in mortal danger without continuing American support.

Ukraine has released images which appear to show the dead body of a former MP whom it allegedly assassinated in Moscow, in a warning to other Russian collaborators.

Illia Kyva, a pro-Kremlin opposition politician who fled to Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, was shot dead on 6 December by a Ukrainian assassin.