“Ukraine – Russia”

The saboteurs managed to place four explosives on a Russian freight train carrying diesel and jet fuel, roughly 3,000 miles from the Ukrainian border. But more important than the destruction of the train, Ukrainian intelligence officials said, was the timing of the blast.

They needed it to blow up as the 50 rail cars were traveling through the nine-mile-long tunnel through the Severomuysky mountains, the longest train tunnel in Russia.

Russia says it has destroyed dozens of missiles and drones fired at its territory from Ukraine. Local officials reported four people, including three children, were killed in attacks.

The Russian defence ministry said 13 missiles and 32 drones were shot down over several Russian regions.

A child was reported killed in Bryansk, while a man and two children in Belgorod are also said to have died.

The attacks follow strikes on Ukraine which killed 39 people.

Western air defences saved many Ukrainians from the Kremlin’s missiles but with 18 dead and support from its allies wavering, Kyiv is in no mood to celebrate

President Putin once boasted that Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, which were among the 158 fired at targets across Ukraine on Friday, were “indestructible”.

Russia launched a wave of hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles as well as kamikaze drones at cities including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro and Odesa.

The ease with which Ukraine was able to swat them away is testament to the power of its western air defences.

The conflict in Ukraine is about to enter its third calendar year. The front lines have hardly moved in the last few months but could the course of the war change in 2024?

President Volodomyr Zelensky has admitted his country’s spring offensive has not been the success he hoped. Russia still controls about 18% of Ukraine.

We asked three military analysts how they think events may unfold in the coming 12 months.

Western defence is too fragmented, too slow to respond, and will be attacked by Putin’s Russia if it doesn’t do more to help Ukraine, their foreign minister says in a rebuke of Europe’s response to the Russian invasion.

Apologies for this seasonal downer. Had the website such a listing, this column would surely soar to number one in The Spectator’s “Least Popular” roster. For just now, few topics are a bigger turn-off than Ukraine.

Following Russia’s invasion, I got caught up in the same waves of emotion that washed over most western publics, and I say that with no regret. After relentlessly battling the prevailing cultural winds these past few years, I was relieved to feel a sense of solidarity for once. Most of us were revulsed by the gratuitous aggression, allied with an underdog whose bite proved surprisingly fierce, thrilled by a former comedian’s unexpected rise to his nation’s occasion and consumed by a weirdly addictive loathing for Vladimir Putin. Kyiv’s repelling Russia’s clumsy invasion of the capital was exhilarating. Like so many of you, in those early months I read about Ukraine every day.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said his troops have seized the key town of Mariinka in eastern Ukraine.

Mr Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin assault units had taken the “powerfully fortified” area just outside Donetsk, a Russian-held regional capital.

The commander of Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi said Ukrainian forces had moved to the outskirts of Mariinka.

Mariinka – seen as a gateway to Donetsk – has been almost completely destroyed.

Mariinka

🐘 T-64BV bursts into the northwestern outskirts of the city and destroys the positions of the Russians at close range. pic.twitter.com/TKBDmUpxkl

— GWAR69 🇩🇰🇺🇦 (@GwarWorin) December 26, 2023

Today, Russian media is rejoicing, boasting that the Russian army has, after 22 months, finally taken the town of Mariinka.

Here's what's left of Mariinka after Russians spent billions in artillery and 15,000 Russian lives there to "take" it. pic.twitter.com/vkB9v9FxPA

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) December 25, 2023

Russia has confirmed one of its warships has been damaged in a Ukrainian attack on a Black Sea port.

The airstrike took place at Feodosiya in Russian-occupied Crimea early on Tuesday morning.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said the large landing ship Novocherkassk was struck by Ukrainian aircraft carrying guided missiles.

The head of the Ukrainian Air Force said earlier its warplanes had destroyed the ship.

Heavy casualties suffered by both sides in the Ukraine war have ignited a race to replenish vehicles lost in combat and protect those that remain operational.

With Ukraine’s supply of Western-donated vehicles beginning to dry up after its counter-offensive failed to produce a breakthrough, and with Russia losing hundreds of tanks in failed eastern assaults, engineers are using every means at their disposal to plug the gaps in their forces.

Modern warfare is just a series of proxy wars.

The war in Ukraine is a proxy war. Ukraine is the proxy of America and NATO. To stem a Russian invasion, America and its NATO allies are helping Ukrainians defend their country against the invaders in every way save by putting “boots on the ground.” The question is just how long America and its allies will persevere and whether respective elected governments can, over time, convince their electorates that the benefits of continued support for Ukraine outweigh the costs, in this case almost entirely financial.

President Vladimir V. Putin’s confidence seems to know no bounds.

Buoyed by Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive and flagging Western support, Mr. Putin says that Russia’s war goals have not changed. Addressing his generals on Tuesday, he boasted that Ukraine was so beleaguered that Russia’s invading troops were doing “what we want.”

“We won’t give up what’s ours,” he pledged, adding dismissively, “If they want to negotiate, let them negotiate.”

But in a recent push of back-channel diplomacy, Mr. Putin has been sending a different message: He is ready to make a deal.

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.”