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.
Key events
Ashifa Kassam
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.
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.
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.
Opening summary
Rachel Hall
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.