A senior former US official suggests Vladimir Putin will have a specific aim in talks with Donald Trump. Elsewhere, Russian drones strike Kharkiv and humanitarian – although a monitoring group says Belarus appears to have shot down a Russian drone. Follow the latest on the Ukraine war.
Tuesday 28 January 2025 17:02, UK
We’ll be back soon with more updates on the war in Ukraine.
Before we go, here is a rundown of what has been happening over the last 24 hours:
Uzbekistan Airways planes are having to avoid Russian and Belarusian airspace when making flights to Europe, according to the Uzbek news channel Repost.
The new routes will now pass through Azerbaijan and Turkey as a “precautionary measure”.
“These are simply precautionary measures and, to some extent, route optimisation,” a spokesperson for Uzbekistan Airways was quoted as saying at a news conference.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has discussed “maintaining close contact” with the US and Donald Trump in a call with Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a message on X, Zelenskyy said he had told Netanyahu about his participation in the events marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and conveyed his condolences to him and the people of Israel.
He also said he welcomed the beginning of the release of hostages.
“It is crucial to ensure a reliable and lasting peace, so that people can live in safety and security,” he wrote.
“We also discussed maintaining close contact with partners, particularly the US and President Trump.
“We addressed current bilateral matters and agreed to maintain close contact in the near future.”
A senior member of the Polish government has accused Russia of trying to recruit Poles on the dark net in an effort to influence Poland’s presidential election campaign.
The European Union and NATO member state has warned before of the danger of Russian interference in the mid-May election but Moscow has repeatedly denied meddling in foreign elections.
Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said Russia was looking for Polish citizens willing to influence the campaign from inside the country, offering them 3,000-4,000 euros (£2,519-£3,358) to spread content containing disinformation.
Gawkowski said recruitment was being done via the dark net, a part of the internet accessible only using a specialised web browser. Poland has been observing such attempts since the start of the year, he said.
“This is money directed from the Russian services GRU and FSB, which are looking for such patrons of their content here,” Gawkowski said, referring to Russia’s military intelligence and its Federal Security Service.
Moscow did not immediately comment on his remarks.
Poland said this month it had identified a Russian group tasked with influencing Polish elections through disinformation and stoking instability.
Warsaw says its role as a hub for supplies to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s invasion had made it a target for spies working for Russia and its ally Belarus, as well as for acts of sabotage. Minsk and Moscow have dismissed accusations that they are behind acts of sabotage.
In December, fellow NATO and European Union member Romania annulled a presidential election after accusations of Russian meddling, which Moscow denied.
The deputy of Russia’s State Duma has responded to claims made by US journalist Tucker Carlson that the Joe Biden administration attempted to assassinate Vladimir Putin.
Speaking on the latest episode of his podcast, Carlson said that Biden’s team “tried to kill Putin” while in office.
The former Fox News commentator did not elaborate further, except to label the idea as “insane”.
Speaking to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, Amir Khamitov said: “We don’t know whether Carlson has any secret data that allows him to assert this, or whether these are just his assumptions.
“But Biden’s reality is so bizarre and unpredictable that anything can be assumed.”
For context: Carlson was ousted from Fox News in 2023 amid the network’s troubles over airing inaccurate claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election, a conspiracy often trumpeted by Carlson on his show.
He travelled to Moscow last February for a widely criticised interview with Putin and returned last month to interview Moscow’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Ukraine’s government has sacked a deputy defence minister in charge of buying weapons amid infighting over procurement.
A dispute ignited last week after defence minister Rustem Umerov criticised Ukraine’s arms acquisition effort as having failed to deliver results for frontline troops.
He subsequently dismissed Dmytro Klimenkov, citing “unsatisfactory” results, and said he would not renew the contract of Maryna Bezrukova, the head of the agency which coordinates weapons purchases for Kyiv’s military.
The agency was established after a series of allegations earlier in the war of ministry misspending, and has aimed to cut out intermediaries and minimise the risk of corruption.
In a statement on Friday, Umerov said the agency had “inexplicably transformed into an ‘Amazon'” and its purchases were too publicly visible.
The agency said in response that it had made “significant progress” in boosting supply and lowering prices, and that it would continue working under Bezrukova.
At least nine Russian drones launched at Ukraine overnight crossed into Belarus, according to a report from a military monitoring group.
The Belarusian Hajun project says the drones were recorded flying in the country’s airspace between 11.30pm and 1.30am (8.30pm and 10.30pm UK time).
It added that, at around 00.55am (9.55pm UK time), an explosion was heard near the Belarusian city of Mazyr. Shortly after this, it says a drone disappeared from its radars.
“At the moment, everything indicates that last night, a Shahed drone was shot down by the air defence forces near Mazyr,” the project concluded.
For context: This is not the first time Russian drones have ended up crossing into Belarus, an ally of Moscow, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In October, the Belarusian Hajun project reported that drones had crossed into Belarusian airspace as the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, was travelling by helicopter.
In the wake of the presidential election in the US, focus has fallen on the prospect of talks between new president Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Both men have signalled a willingness to engage in discussions with the other, with each hinting that any negotiations could potentially range beyond the topic of Ukraine.
Stephen Sestanovich, a Russian and Eurasian studies expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former US State Department official, said a limited presence for Kyiv in the talks would be an incentive for Russia’s president.
“For all these blustering exchanges, the thing Putin most wants to hear is that this is a deal Russia and the US will strike by themselves,” he told the New York Times.
He suggested the American leader should factor this in when approaching negotiations, saying: “To keep Putin off balance, Trump has to show him a deal is possible only if it makes sense to Ukraine and our allies.”
Moscow and Washington briefly discussed arms control talks during the Biden administration in 2021.
Wendy Sherman, the former deputy secretary of state, who conducted the talks for the US side, warned that if talks with Russia begin, the Trump administration should be prepared – and conscious of what the Russian leader sought to achieve from the negitiations.
“Putin will want what he has always said he wanted: As much territory as possible, no Ukraine ever in NATO, no Western nuclear weapons in Europe that could target Russia,” she said.
She added that she believed a discussion of a revival of the arms control treaty that has been partly suspended by Russia and expires in February next year, was “likely low on his list”.
Ukraine has halted a Russian security service plot to carry out strikes on fighter jets and helicopters, according to Kyiv.
The SBU security service said it had detained two Ukrainian nationals they accuse of being Russian “agents” after they photographed an F-16 jet taking off.
It added it had seized phones with evidence they were gathering intelligence for Russia’s FSB to prepare a strike on airfields.
The suspects are being held without bail and face life imprisonment if found guilty.
A Ukrainian special forces commander has told Sky News that North Koreans have been seen blowing themselves up with grenades rather than risking capture.
The commander, who goes by the codename ‘Puls’, said Kim Jong Un’s men were likely either learning lessons from mistakes made during their first, bloody clashes with Ukrainian soldiers, tending to their wounded or waiting for reinforcements.
Watch security and defence editor Deborah Haynes‘s full report from the frontline in Ukraine here…
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