Here are the key developments on the 1,038th day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Here is the situation on Saturday, December 28:
Fighting:
- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Saturday it had foiled a plot by Ukrainian intelligence services to kill a high-ranking Russian officer and a war blogger, the Interfax news agency reported.
- Ukrainian forces have killed or wounded more than 1,000 North Korean soldiers Russia has sent to fight them, according to Ukraine and South Korea. “Their losses are significant, very significant. We see that neither the Russian military nor their North Korean overseers have any interest in ensuring the survival of these North Koreans,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Friday. United States National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, meanwhile, said a “human wave” of North Korean troops was being sent to their deaths in “hopeless” attacks by generals who saw them as expendable.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Friday that its forces had taken control of two eastern Ukrainian villages, Ivanivka in the Donetsk region and Zahryzove in the Kharkiv region, the RIA state news agency reported.
- RIA also cited the ministry as claiming it had downed four British-made Storm Shadow missiles in the past week.
- A North Korean soldier, who was fighting for Russia, has died in Ukrainian captivity due to severe wounds, according to South Korea’s spy agency.
- Ukrainian air defence shot down 13 out of 24 Russian drones launched in an overnight attack, the air force said on Friday. The air force said the other 11 Russian drones were “lost” without causing damage.
Deals and diplomacy:
- The administration of US President Joe Biden pledged to approve fresh military aid to Ukraine, including air defence systems. Kirby said the US security assistance package was expected to be announced “in the next couple of days”.
- “If someone wants to organise peace talks in Slovakia, we will be ready and hospitable,” said Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in a post on Facebook late on Friday. His remarks come after Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was open to a Slovakian proposal to host peace talks with Ukraine.
- Ukraine received its first batch of liquefied natural gas from the US, a deal that Kyiv says is key to boost Ukrainian and European energy security as a major gas transit deal with Russia ends. “Dtek, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, has today taken delivery of its first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States,” the company said on Friday.
Dissent:
- A Russian court sentenced Eduard Sharlot, 26, a singer who burned his passport in protest against Russia’s Ukraine war, to five and a half years in prison, according to Russian news agencies. Sharlot was found guilty of “publicly insulting” the religious feelings of believers and “rehabilitating Nazism” by a court in the Volga city of Samara in a case over videos he published online, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported.