Volodymyr Zelenskyy says nearly 15,000 Russians have been killed in Kursk since Ukraine launched an incursion into the Russian region in August. Submit your questions for our correspondents in the box below.
Tuesday 7 January 2025 10:21, UK
Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy has postponed a trip to Kyiv until after the inauguration, four sources with knowledge of the trip’s planning have told the Reuters news agency.
Keith Kellogg had initially planned a mission to Ukraine’s capital to meet with the country’s leaders in early January.
But the trip, which would have been the first time incoming Trump officials had visited Kyiv since the US election, has been pushed back, according to the sources.
Kellogg is now expected to travel to Ukraine after Trump takes office on 20 January, though no date has been set, the sources said.
For context: Trump has promised peace in Ukraine when he takes office but has not shared how he plans to achieve it.
Under Kellogg’s proposed strategy, published last year, the White House would tell Kyiv that it would only get more American weapons if it enters peace talks.
At the same time, Washington would warn Moscow that any refusal to negotiate would result in increased US support for Ukraine.
Russia’s defence ministry says its frontline troops in three regional areas of combat have all repelled Ukrainian counter-attacks and improved their own positions in the last 24 hours.
The ministry said these included northern units in the Kharkiv direction and areas in the Donetsk region.
It added that Russian forces had shot down six US-supplied HIMARS missiles and 50 Ukrainian drones.
Yesterday, Moscow said it had made important gains in eastern Ukraine while continuing to fend off a new offensive in its Kursk region.
Here is the latest battlefield map showing the frontline:
Vladimir Putin has attended an Orthodox Christmas service in Moscow today.
Orthodox Christians in Russia celebrate Christmas on 7 January, according to the Julian calendar.
Putin lit candles at the Christmas liturgy at the Church of St. George the Victorious, which sits as part of a memorial complex dedicated to Russia’s victory in the Second World War.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Putin asked the patriarch of the church to bless crosses and icons that will be delivered to Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.
Poland says it is ready to supply Ukraine with electricity after Slovakia threatened to cut off power to Kyiv.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said last week that his party would consider cutting electricity supplies to Ukraine due to the end of Russian gas flows through the war-battered country.
Poland’s climate and environment minister Paulina Hennig-Kloska said Fico’s behaviour “is against Europe” and said Warsaw would be able to increase its electricity sales to Ukraine if asked.
“Our operator is ready, it is only a matter of whether Ukraine will want or have to use it,” she told public broadcaster TVP Info.
We’ve been focusing a lot on the Russian region of Kursk recently, where Ukraine first launched an offensive in August.
Over the weekend Kyiv’s forces launched a new offensive in the area, leading to fierce fighting.
Speaking to Sky News, Robert Clark, a fellow at the US thinktank Yorktown Institute, says Ukraine’s offensive is likely a “bargaining chip” to put them in a stronger negotiating position later in the year – with Donald Trump promising to secure a peace deal on his return to the White House in less than two weeks.
“The Ukrainian effort is actually going surprisingly well,” he says. “And it’s going to be interesting to see how much further they can push into Kursk.”
Asked what Trump will make of this, Mr Clark says the fighting in Kursk will mean a “huge deal more” for Vladimir Putin than it will for the incoming US president.
“President Putin has committed his reputation with the Russian people quite recently over Christmas that he will return all of Russia and Kursk, to Russia,” he adds.
“So the ability for Putin to really retain control of Kursk is going to be far more important to him and to Russia than it will be to President Trump going forward.”
North Korea says it has tested a new hypersonic intermediate-range missile designed to strike “remote targets in the North Pacific”.
South Korea reported that it had detected the launch that landed in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
Kim Jong Un said yesterday’s launch “clearly showed the rivals what we are doing and that we are fully ready to use even any means to defend our legitimate interests”, state news agency KCNA said.
Western allies have grown increasingly concerned by the growing alignment between North Korea and Russia in Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Pyongyang has sent around 12,000 troops to Russia to help it fight Ukraine, with Moscow reportedly providing military equipment and training to North Korea in return.
Yesterday’s launch took place while Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, was visiting Seoul for talks over the North Korean nuclear threat and other issues.
The diplomat condemned North Korea’s launch and reiterated concerns about the growing relationship between North Korea and Russia.
A bit more on Ukraine’s offensive in the Russian region of Kursk.
Yesterday, reports emerged that Kyiv’s forces had made a fresh attack in the area.
In his nightly address, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that, since Ukraine began fighting in Kursk in August, Russia had lost 38,000 troops.
Of that number, Ukraine’s president said nearly 15,000 had been killed.
He added that the incursion into Kursk had established a buffer zone for Kyiv, preventing Russian forces from being deployed in key areas of the front in eastern Ukraine.
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Overnight, the Ukrainian military says it shot down 28 of 38 drones launched by Russia, with the other ten failing to reach their targets.
Before we look at the key lines today, here’s a brief summary of yesterday’s biggest stories:
Here’s the latest battlefield situation:
Today has seen a lot of movement in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine launched an offensive last year.
We’ll be back tomorrow with more updates on the war in Ukraine.
But here is a look at the key lines from today before that:
The UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) will track potential threats to undersea infrastructure and monitor the Russian shadow fleet after reported damage to a major undersea cable in the Baltic Sea.
The Ministry of Defence has said the operation, named Nordic Warden, was activated last week and will calculate the risk posed by each vessel entering areas of interest.
Specific vessels identified as being part of Russia’s shadow fleet have been registered into the system so they can be “closely monitored when approaching key areas of interest”.
“If a potential risk is assessed, the system will monitor the suspicious vessel in real time and immediately send out a warning, which will be shared with JEF participant nations as well as NATO allies,” the ministry added.
For context: In December, NATO enhanced its military presence in the Baltic Sea after undersea power and internet cables were cut between Estonia and Finland.
An undersea power cable and four internet cables were cut.
There have been a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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