Russia confirms navy vessel hit
One person was killed, two injured and a large landing ship called Novocherkassk was damaged in an overnight Ukrainian attack on the Crimean port city of Feodosia, Russia’s defence ministry and officials said.
The Interfax news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying that Ukraine had used guided missiles launched by aircraft to attack Feodosia.
Reuters reported that the Russia-installed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said on the Telegram messaging app that one person had been killed and two injured as a result of the attack.
There was no immediate report of how badly the ship was damaged, but videos circulating on Ukrainian channels showed an extensive fire in the port area.
Key events
The Ukrainian army chief Gen Valeriy Zaluzhnyi has said he is not satisfied with the work of military draft offices that are responsible for mobilising troops to keep up the war effort against Russia.
Reuters reports:
Zaluzhnyi spoke at his first wartime news conference a day after Ukraine’s parliament published the text of a draft law containing reforms to the army draft programme, including lowering the age of men who can be mobilised to 25 from 27.
The bill’s publication sparked controversy on social media, which appeared to be the prompt for the typically publicity-shy general into a rare effort to speak to the media.
The reforms are highly sensitive for a weary population in the midst of a 22-month-old war, which has no end in sight. Last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the military had proposed mobilising an additional 450,000-500,000 people into the army.
Zaluzhnyi acknowledged that figure, but said:
I would not publicly discuss these figures.
We had rather ambitious goals in 2023. I was not disappointed by the level of (foreign assistance) in 2023. Of course it was not the full (amount requested), but it allowed us to conduct confident military operations.
Tensions between Zaluzhnyi and Zelenskiy burst into the open in November after the general was quoted as saying the war was heading towards a stalemate because of the technological state of play on the battlefield, a comment that drew a rebuke from the president’s office.
Zelenskiy and his allies have consistently portrayed a less gloomy view of the war, in which they have said Ukraine can and will drive Russian forces out of every last inch of occupied territory.
Zaluzhnyi said the period since he made his comments had vindicated them:
I received lots of criticism for this, but in time people realised that I was absolutely right.
He said Ukraine and its allies had already identified solutions to the majority of the questions and problems he raised in his comments about the battlefield in November.
On the drafting effort, he said he would support the introduction of electronic army call-ups, a step that would replace or reinforce the current model in which draft officers hand out call-up papers to people in the street or at check points.
Here’s a map showing the location of the Russian navy landing ship which Ukraine said it destroyed overnight.
Ukrainian army chief dissatisfied with army draft programme changes
The Ukrainian army chief, Gen Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, has said he is not satisfied with the work of military draft offices that are responsible for mobilising troops to keep up the war effort against Russian forces.
Zaluzhnyi made the comments at a press conference in Kyiv a day after Ukraine’s parliament published the text of a draft law containing changes to the army draft programme, including lowering the age of men who can be mobilised to 25 from 27.
A former TV journalist who opposes Russia’s war in Ukraine and who was disqualified on Saturday as a candidate for Russia’s upcoming presidential election has lodged an appeal with the supreme court.
Members of the central electoral commission voted unanimously to reject the candidacy of Yekaterina Duntsova, citing “numerous violations” in the papers she had submitted in support of her bid.
Speaking to Reuters after submitting an appeal to the supreme court, Duntsova – who is not well known across Russia and by her own admission commands a core support base of thousands in a country of over 140 million people – made it clear that she did not expect her appeal to be successful.
But the 40-year-old said she had been unfairly barred from taking part in a contest widely expected to be won by the incumbent, Vladimir Putin, who has been in power as either president or prime minister for more than 20 years.
By not letting her run, she said the authorities had deprived some young Russians of a way of expressing their views within what is a tightly controlled political system.
Charlotte Higgins
The Guardian’s chief culture writer, Charlotte Higgins, has a dispatch on Ukraine’s history-rich east, where the war with Russia is hastening both historical discoveries and the destruction of treasures.
She writes:
Ukraine is a country spectacularly rich in ancient archaeology, whether of the Scythians, with their horses and finely worked gold, who ranged across the steppes from the ninth to second centuries BC, or of the intriguing stone age Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, which produced remarkable, elaborately decorated ceramics and huge, city-scale “megasites”, or of the Greeks, who established trading emporiums on the Black Sea coast.
But in a country with already limited resources for cultural protection, Russia’s full-scale invasion has meant an onslaught of destruction to this rich record of the past.
The full extent of the damage is impossible accurately to assess. Research published this month in the journal Antiquity points to the difficulty of on-the-ground assessment even in liberated areas such as Chernihiv oblast in the north and Kharkiv in the east because of the danger of landmines and unexploded munitions.
Meanwhile, museum collections from occupied cities such as Melitopol, Kherson and Mariupol have been lifted and taken wholesale to Russia and Crimea. Cultural heritage of all kinds, including churches and other monuments, has been targeted, with destruction “at a rate not seen since 1945”, according to the authors. Trench-digging is “destroying buried cultural heritage at an alarming rate”, they add. The authors regard archaeological sites with particular concern, as “more problematic and less understood” than other forms of cultural heritage.
Grant Shapps, the UK secretary of state for defence, said today that the “latest destruction of Putin’s navy demonstrates that those who believe there’s a stalemate in the Ukraine war are wrong!”
He added:
They haven’t noticed that over the past four months 20% of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been destroyed.
Russia’s dominance in the Black Sea is now challenged and the new UK and Norway led maritime capability coalition is helping to ensure Ukraine will win at sea.
This latest destruction of Putin’s navy demonstrates that those who believe there’s a stalemate in the Ukraine war are wrong!
They haven’t noticed that over the past 4 months 20% of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has been destroyed.
Russia’s dominance in the Black Sea is now… https://t.co/F6zRmA9Kwx
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) December 26, 2023
After the Ukrainian air force said it struck the Novocherkassk navy ship, which was stationed in Crimean waters controlled by Russia, Ukraine’s defence ministry said on social media that its troops had “modified” the ship to a submarine.
Ukrainian minister thanks UK for pilot training
Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister, said today he wanted “to express deep gratitude” to the British government “for providing basic training to Ukraine’s combat air pilots”.
He added:
Ukraine highly values the pilot training that the UK and other partners are providing to help us prepare for operating F-16s in Ukraine. This is a very significant contribution to the international Air Force Capability Coalition for Ukraine.
Today I want to express deep gratitude to the Government of the United Kingdom and Secretary of State for Defence @grantshapps for providing basic training to Ukraine’s combat air pilots.
Ukraine highly values the pilot training that the UK and other partners are providing to…
— Rustem Umerov (@rustem_umerov) December 26, 2023
Summary of the day so far
Rachel Hall
Here are the key developments from the day so far:
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The Ukrainian air force said it struck Russia’s Novocherkassk navy ship during an air attack on Feodosia in Crimea, controlled by Russia. Ukraine said the ship had been destroyed, but Russia said it was only damaged. Footage circulating on several Russian news outlets on Telegram showed powerful explosions and fires over a port area.
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Russia said its forces had stopped Ukraine’s counteroffensive and are now pushing forward on all fronts.
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Japan’s Mitsui & Co has decided to pull its employees out of Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, citing several sources. The decision is yet another blow for the project. Fearing the backlash from US sanctions targeting the project, foreign shareholders have suspended their participation.
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The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will hold talks with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia’s foreign ministry has said. The ministers plan to discuss bilateral ties as well as the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
The jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Tuesday confirmed his arrival at what he described as a snow-swept prison above the Arctic Circle and said he was in excellent spirits despite a tiring 20-day journey to get there.
Navalny posted an update on X via his lawyers, after his allies lost touch with him for more than two weeks while he was in transit with no information about where he was being taken, prompting expressions of concern from western politicians.
His spokeswoman said on Monday that Navalny, 47, had been tracked down to the IK-3 penal colony north of the Arctic Circle located in Kharp in the Yamal-Nenets region about 1,900km north-east of Moscow.
Navalny wrote jokingly in his first post from his new prison, in reference to the harsh weather conditions there and Russia’s Father Christmas:
I am your new Father Frost.
Here’s some additional context on the Russian warship struck by Ukrainian forces in Crimea:
The Russian defence ministry, cited by the Interfax news agency, said Ukraine had used air-launched missiles to attack the Crimean port of Feodosia and that the Novocherkassk large landing ship had been damaged.
The attack could hinder any Russian attempt to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in a move Kyiv and the west condemned as an illegal seizure.
The Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said he thought it would be hard for the Novocherkassk – which can carry tanks and armoured vehicles and be used to land troops ashore – to re-enter service.
He told Radio Free Europe:
We can see how powerful the explosion was, what the detonation was like. After that, it’s very hard for a ship to survive, because this was not a rocket, this is the detonation of munitions.
Ukraine had used cruise missiles in the attack, without specifying what kind, Ihnat said. Britain and France have supplied Kyiv with such missiles.
Russia has hinted it may try to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast. Putin earlier this month said that Odesa, the headquarters of Ukraine’s navy, was “a Russian city”.
Footage posted on Russian news outlets on Telegram, purportedly from the port, showed powerful explosions detonating and fires burning.
Unverified social media videos purporting to capture the strike showed a vast explosion and ballooning flames lighting up the night sky. An unverified daytime photograph, which Ukrainian bloggers claimed showed the ship’s remains, depicted a charred, elongated clump of debris emerging out of the water by a dock.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-installed governor of Crimea, said on Telegram that one person had been killed. The RIA news agency said four people had been injured.
Although a Ukrainian counteroffensive has made little in the way of battlefield gains and the Russian military has regained the initiative in several places, Ukraine has been able to launch a series of attacks on Crimea, the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, inflicting serious damage.
Previous attacks have targeted ships in dry docks, warships moored in the main port of Sevastopol, airfields, the main Black Sea fleet HQ building, and the bridge that connects southern Russia to Crimea.
Throughout the war, Russia has used its fleet to impede Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea, the main export route for the agriculture and steel exports that formed a significant chunk of the country’s economy.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, quipped on Telegram that his air force had added to Russia’s submarine fleet by damaging the landing ship.
There will not be a single peaceful place for the occupiers in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian air force said its pilots had attacked Feodosia at about 2.30am (0030 GMT), destroying the Novocherkassk.
The commander of Ukraine’s air force, Mykola Oleshchuk, said on Telegram:
And the fleet in Russia is getting smaller and smaller! Thanks to the Air Force pilots and everyone involved for the filigree work!
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, said on Telegram it was obvious that Russia would not release detailed information about the attack at a time of war, but said Russia needed to do more to protect its assets in Crimea.
He said:
It’s clear that Crimea’s air defence systems must be strengthened. And it is clear that it [Ukraine] needs to be deprived of the opportunity to hit Russia.
Feodosia, which has a population of about 69,000 people, lies on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula
Taiwan’s economy ministry says it has expanded a list of sanctioned goods for Russia and Belarus in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Taiwan has condemned Russia’s attack and already joined the Western-led sanctions effort, though it is largely symbolic as there is only minimal direct trade between the island and Russia.
Announcing its latest round of sanctions, Taiwan’s economy ministry said the move was made “in order to fulfil international cooperation and prevent the export of our high-tech goods for military purposes”.
The list includes equipment for making semiconductors, the production of which Taiwan is a world leader in, as well as certain chemicals and medicines, adding to previous announcements which already targetted the chip industry.
Russia claims to have stopped Ukraine’s counteroffensive
Russia is saying its forces have stopped Ukraine’s counteroffensive and are now pushing forward on all fronts, according to a Tass news agency report of the defence minister Sergei Shoigu’s comments.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will hold talks with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in Moscow on Wednesday, Russia’s foreign ministry has said.
The ministers plan to discuss bilateral ties as well as the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and issues related to groups such as Brics, it said in a statement.