Vladimir Putin’s troops target embassies in Ukraine in retaliation for providing Kyiv with weapons
Russia has sent a sinister message to the world targeting six foreign embassies in Ukraine with missiles in retaliation for the ongoing supply of western weapons to Kyiv.
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Russian missiles targeted Kyiv at sunrise on Friday, killing at least one person and damaging six diplomatic missions and a university in the centre of the Ukrainian capital.
Moscow said it attacked Ukraine as retaliation for a strike using Western missiles on a chemical plant in Russia earlier in the week.
Russian aerial attacks regularly target the capital but rarely cause damage of that scale as Kyiv is well protected by air defence, nearly three years into Russia’s invasion.
“There were explosions after explosions in a row,” said 45-year-old Ksenia, who was staying at a hotel near the site of a wreckage.
The air force said it downed all five Iskander missiles Russia launched at the capital, but that debris caused damage in several districts.
The strikes killed a 53-year-old man and wounded 12 people, most suffering from shrapnel injuries, the city’s administration said.
They also damaged a building housing the diplomatic missions of Albania, Argentina, Palestine, North Macedonia, Portugal and Montenegro, the Ukrainian foreign ministry said.
“Another heinous Russian attack against Kyiv,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen posted on X. “Putin’s disregard for international law reaches new heights.” In the absence of the Russian ambassador in Lisbon, the chargé d’affaires of the Russian Federation has been summoned to be presented with a formal protest, the Portuguese government said.
“These are barbaric attacks on diplomatic institutions, this is crossing all possible red lines and international rules,” foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy was quoted as saying by Ukrainian agency Interfax.
The building of the Kyiv National Linguistics University was also impacted, according to the institution’s Instagram account, which posted photos of a main campus building whose windows had been completely blown out, glass shards covering the floor.
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PUTIN READY TO TALK TO TRUMP ‘ANYTIME’
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was ready for talks “anytime” with US President-elect Donald Trump, who has touted his ability to strike a Ukraine peace deal within hours of coming to office.
Trump, who will return to the White House in January, has stoked fears in Kyiv that he could force Ukraine to accept peace on terms favourable to Moscow.
Holding his annual end-of-year press conference, the Kremlin leader said his troops held the upper hand across the battlefield, but was forced to admit he does not know when Russia will take back the western Kursk region where Ukrainian troops launched an incursion in August.
The traditional annual question and answer sessions, often lasting hours, are largely a televised show while also being a rare setting in which he is put on the spot and answers some uncomfortable questions.
Asked about Trump’s overtures regarding a possible peace deal, Putin, 72, said he would welcome a meeting with the incoming Republican.
“I don’t know when I’m going to see him. He isn’t saying anything about it. I haven’t talked to him in more than four years. I am ready for it, of course. Any time,” Putin said.
“If we ever have a meeting with President-elect Trump, I am sure we’ll have a lot to talk about,” he said, adding that Russia was ready for “negotiations and compromises”.
PUTIN SLAMS ASSASSINATION AS ‘TERRORISM’
Putin also called the killing of a senior Russian army general in a brazen assassination in Moscow two days earlier “terrorism”, in his first comments on the attack, while also slamming failings by security services.
Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military’s chemical weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter outside a residential block in Moscow, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict. Russia has since arrested the suspected perpetrator.
“Our special services are missing these hits,” the former KGB agent said in a rare admission of failures by the security services, listing other recent killings.
“We must not allow such very serious blunders to happen,” he said.
UKRAINE’S ‘GAME CHANGER’
The Ukrainian military has unveiled a powerful new weapon it says could be a game-changer in its conflict with Russia, just a few months before it hits the three-year mark.
The laser air-defence system, known as Trident, can shoot down aircraft at an altitude of more than 2km and it’s believed to be only the fifth country in the world to have it.
“It really works; it really exists,” the head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, said at the Europe Defence Industry conference.
The Trident — or Tryzub in Ukrainian — appears on the country’s coast of arms.
Colonel Sukharevsky said the country is also working on “queen drones”, which are large unmanned aerial vehicles capable of carrying and deploying smaller strike drones.
The news comes eight months after former UK Defence Minister Grant Shapps said a prototype of the British DragonFire laser could be used to fight against Russian drones.
Mr Shapps told The Telegraph these weapons — which will be formally unveiled in 2027 — could have “huge ramifications” in the war which has been raging since February 2022.
It comes as Russia makes some of its fastest advances since the econflict began, with the introduction of North Korean troops to the war zone.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold his annual end-of-year press conference Thursday, almost three years into his Ukraine offensive and two days after a Kyiv-orchestrated killing of a general on the streets of Moscow.
Putin’s traditional annual question and answer sessions, often lasting hours, are largely a televised show while also being a rare setting in which he is put on the spot and answers some uncomfortable questions.
He will address Russians as the conflict in Ukraine escalates in recent weeks and with both sides seeking to gain an advantage before Donald Trump — who has called for negotiations to begin — enters the White House in January.
RUSSIA DETAINS SUSPECT IN BRAZEN BOMB BLAST
Russia detained a suspect in the killing of the head of the army’s chemical weapons division a day after the general and his aide were killed in a brazen blast in Moscow.
Igor Kirillov and his assistant were killed when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off Tuesday morning outside an apartment building in the city’s southeast.
The Kremlin attributed the attack to Ukraine and said it proved “the Kyiv regime does not shy away from using terrorist methods”.
The detained suspect said he had been “recruited by Ukrainian special forces”, it added.
The handcuffed man was shown in video footage confessing to the attack.
He had several cuts on his face and said that he was promised “$100,000 (A$160,000) and a European passport” for carrying out the attack.
Investigators said the suspect had told them he came to Moscow to carry out the attack and received an explosive device which he placed on an electric scooter parked outside Kirillov’s apartment building, which he activated via remote control.
A camera mounted on the dashboard of a rented car parked outside the building had filmed the attack and streamed it “live to the attack organisers, in the (Ukrainian) city of Dnipro”.
The suspect faces a charge of carrying out a “terrorist” attack, and investigators said they were seeking to identify others involved.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised security services for working “effectively” and “fast” in detaining a suspect.
The blast went off in a residential area in southeast Moscow a day after President Vladimir Putin hailed Russian troop successes in Ukraine.
WHO WAS IGOR KIRILLOV?
Kirillov was the head of the Russian army’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit and was sanctioned by Britain over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.
A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service said it was behind the explosion in what it called a “special operation”, calling Kirillov a “war criminal”.
“Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target, as he gave orders to use banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military,” the source told the AFP.
“Such an inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable,” the source said.
While Ukraine has not publicly taken responsibility for the hit a well-placed source in Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrayiny – Ukraine’s spy agency – confirmed to the Guardian they were behind it.
“We were involved in the operation,” the source said.
Deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev condemned the assassination and vowed revenge.
“Realising the inevitability of its military defeat, it launches cowardly and despicable strikes in peaceful cities,” he told RIA news agency.
NORTH KOREAN SOLDIERS KILLED BY UKRAINE
Ukraine said that its troops killed or wounded at least 30 North Korean soldiers who had been deployed by Russia to its western Kursk region, where Ukraine has seized territory.
Thousands of troops from North Korea have come to reinforce Russian forces, including in the Kursk border region where Russia has been clawing back territory after a surprise offensive from Ukrainian forces this summer.
“On December 14 and 15, army units from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) suffered significant losses near the villages of Plekhovo, Vorozhba, Martynovka in the Kursk region of Russia — at least 30 soldiers were killed and wounded,” Ukraine’s military intelligence said.
The units are “being replenished with fresh personnel” from North Korea, which Western officials estimate has sent at least 10,000 soldiers to help Moscow.
Russia and North Korea have boosted their military ties since Moscow’s invasion. Russia has begun deploying “a noticeable number” of North Koreans in assaults to push Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk region, Zelenskyy said.
He said that according to his information, “the Russians include (North Koreans) in combined units and use them in operations in the Kursk region”, where Ukraine launched an incursion in August.
– with Agence France-Presse (AFP)
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