Australia urges Russia to act in accordance to international humanitarian law
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Russian president Vladimir Putin hosted Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico who marked a rare visit to the Kremlin by an EU leader since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The visit comes as Russian natural gas still flows to some European countries, including Slovakia, through Ukraine under a five-year agreement signed before the war that is due to expire at the end of this year.
At a summit in Brussels last week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders that Kyiv has no intention of renewing the deal, something Mr Fico insisted will harm his country’s interests.
On the battlefront, Mr Putin threatened Ukraine with “more destruction” a day after drones struck several building in Kazan. Residential buildings were damaged and an airport was temporarily shut down.
Meanwhile, a video of a 32-year-old man claiming to be Australian captured by Russia sparked diplomatic concerns as authorities rushed to ascertain his identity.
Australia urged Russia to act in accordance to “international humanitarian law, including with respect to prisoners of war”, as they worked to provide consular support to the family of the man identified as Oscar Jenkins.
Key points
US president-elect Donald Trump said Russian president Vladimir Putin has expressed his interest in a meeting him to discuss the Ukraine war.
“President Putin said that he wants to meet with me as soon as possible,” Mr Trump said during his remarks at Turning Point’s America Fest convention yesterday. “So we have to wait for this, but we have to end that war. That war is horrible, horrible,” he was quoted as saying by CNBC.
“The number of soldiers being killed...” Mr Trump said. “It’s a flat plane, and the bullets are going and there’s powerful bullets, powerful guns, and the only thing that’s going to stop them is a human body.”
Earlier, Mr Trump has claimed he could end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours” if he gets elected.
Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 47 out of 72 Russia-launched drones across the country.
In a statement on Telegram this morning, it said that an additional 25 drones had not reached targets and were “locationally lost”.
Russia’s Gazprom said that it would send 42.1 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine this morning, a volume in line with recent days.
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said he considered the sometimes harsh criticism of German chancellor Olaf Scholz by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to be unjustified, news wire DPA reported.
Although Germany has been a vital ally of Ukraine, its hesitation in providing long-range Taurus cruise missiles has been a source of frustration in Kyiv, which is battling a foe armed with a powerful array of long-range weaponry.
“I have often told Zelenskiy that he should stop criticising Olaf Scholz, because I think it is unfair,” DPA quoted Mr Rutte on Monday as saying in an interview.
Mr Rutte also said that he, unlike Mr Scholz, would supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles and would not set limits on their use.
“In general, we know that such capabilities are very important for Ukraine,”Mr Rutte said, adding that it was not up to him to decide what allies should deliver.
After a November telephone call by Mr Scholz with Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin in November, Mr Zelensky said it had opened a Pandora’s box that undermined efforts to isolate the Russian leader and end the war in Ukraine with a “fair peace”.
Ukrainian drones struck a major Russian fuel depot for the second time in just over a week on Sunday, according to a senior Russian regional official, as part of a “massive” cross-border attack on fuel and energy facilities that Kyiv says supply Moscow’s military.
The strikes came days after Russia launched sweeping attacks on Ukraine’s already battered energy grid, threatening to plunge thousands of homes into darkness as winter tightens its grip over the region, and as Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor nears the three-year mark.
A fire broke out at the Stalnoy Kon oil terminal in Russia’s southern Oryol region, local Gov. Andrey Klychkov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app, adding Russian forces downed 20 drones targeting “fuel and energy infrastructure” in the province.
The Australian government is making urgent inquiries after a video on social media appeared to show a citizen captured by Russian authorities.
In the video, a 32-year-old man identified himself as Oscar Jenkins, a biology teacher from Australia. Mr Jenkins’s hands were bound by tape as he answered questions about his identity in English and broken Russian. In the footage circulating online, the man, dressed in military fatigue, could be seen being struck on his head with a cane, as he said: “I’m Australian…Oscar Jenkins. 32 years old … I study biology.”
“This is concerning news, and we’re working through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide support, including, for this gentleman, trying to ascertain the details and the facts which are there,” Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Monday morning.
The acting foreign affair minister Mark Dreyfus, meanwhile urged Russia to treat Mr Jenkins as per international laws.
“We urge the Russian government to fully adhere to its obligations under international humanitarian law, including with respect to prisoners of war. Our immediate priority is understanding where Mr Jenkins is and confirming his wellbeing,” he said.
Vladimir Putin praised Boris Johnson’s hair as he referred to a quote there is no online record of the former prime minister ever having said. During a four-hour phone-in on Thursday (19 December), the Russian president said: “Prime minister Johnson with the great hair... He said they need to fight until the last Ukrainian, that’s what they’re doing now. They’re running out of Ukrainians who would like to fight, I don’t think there are any left.” Mr Putin appeared to reference a Kremlin-peddled theory that Mr Johnson hindered peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow, something the former PM denied, telling The Times it was “total nonsense and Russian propaganda.”
In a major reshuffle, Volodymyr Zelensky has announced replacing Sergiy Korsunsky as the country’s ambassador to Japan.
On Friday, the Ukrainian president approved appointment of 30 new ambassadors including the envoys to China and Lithuania. However, Mr Korsunsky’s successor in Japan has not yet been announced. He is expected to stay in the country till February, he told NHK.
Mr Korsunsky, named as ambassador to Japan in 2020, has been actively campaigning across the Asian nation, seeking support for his country and had in past expressed gratitude for the monetary donations delivered to the Ukrainian embassy in Ukraine.
Through the supply of troops and weapons, North Korea is aiding Moscow in the areas it needs the most support, said a Canadian general.
“North Koreans are not only replacing some Russian personnel but they are also making up for the lack of munitions and other assets that Russia either can’t produce on its own or can’t replace as fast as needed to sustain a war of attrition like this one,” Major General Greg Smith, director-general of international security policy with Canada’s Department of National Defence told The Japan Times.
“This means that North Koreans are physically fighting and dying for Russia, which is a very troubling development that highlights the growing internationalization of the conflict,” Mr Smith told the outlet.
The remarks come as Washington and Kyiv recently claimed that North Korean soldiers took heavy casualties while fighting Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region.
The Ukrainian military intelligence agency said at least 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded, while a US official suggested the figure for North Korean casualties was in the “several hundreds”.
Ukraine’s security service has named a Russian general it suspects of ordering a missile strike on a hotel in eastern Ukraine in August and said he acted “with the motive of deliberately killing employees of” Reuters.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a statement on Friday that Colonel General Alexei Kim, a deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff, approved the strike that killed Reuters safety adviser Ryan Evans and wounded two of the agency’s journalists on 24 August.
In a statement posted on Telegram messenger the SBU said it was notifying Mr Kim in absentia that he was an official suspect in its investigation into the strike on the Sapphire Hotel in Kramatorsk, a step in Ukrainian criminal proceedings that can later lead to charges.
In a separate, 15-page notice of suspicion, in which the SBU set out findings from its investigation, the agency said that the decision to fire the missile was made “with the motive of deliberately killing employees of the international news agency Reuters who were engaged in journalistic activities in Ukraine”.
The document, which was published on the website of the General Prosecutor’s Office on Friday, said that Mr Kim had received intelligence that Reuters staff were staying in Kramatorsk. It added that Kim would have been “fully aware that the individuals were civilians and not participating in the armed conflict”.
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