Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin’s ship fires at German helicopter

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha has strongly opposed any deals similar to earlier Yalta or Minsk agreements, which could legitimise Russian aggression.

“Russia wants a second Yalta or at least a third Minsk. It wants a world of zones of influence where power dictates the rules, changes borders, and deprives people of their right to freedom. But we are clear: there will be no Yalta-2 or Minsk-3,” Mr Sybiha said at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Malta.

The Minsk I and II agreements of 2014-15 attempted to end the war in Donbas, while the Yalta conference in 1945 divided spheres of influence in Europe between the USSR and the Western powers after the Second World War.

Analysis of Russia’s federal budget shows that a recent drop in the recruitment of soldiers is outpacing losses on the battlefield despite hikes in sign-on bonuses, claimed the Meduza news outlet.

Meduza estimated that Russia was losing between 600 and 750 troops per day, but was signing just 500 and 600 new contracts per day in the third quarter of 2024, citing expenditures for sign-on bonuses and earlier research.

But more liberal estimates suggest Russia may have enlisted 82,000 new contracts in the third quarter if there were delays in bonuses for budgeting purposes.

The UK Ministry of Defence separately tweeted that the average daily Russian casualties reached a monthly high in November.

Ukraine has seen no signs that Russia is ready for meaningful peace talks, the head of its presidential office Andrii Yermak said on Wednesday (4 December).

“They only want to dictate and speak the language of ultimatums,” Mr Yermak told The Telegraph.

A Russian man has gone on trial in Finland on charges of war crimes allegedly committed against Ukrainian forces in a Russia-backed separatist region of Ukraine in 2014.

Prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for the defendant at the trial which opened Thursday at the Helsinki district court, public broadcaster YLE reported.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was in Malta for the annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in his first visit to a European Union nation since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. US secretary of state Antony Blinken and the Ukraine‘s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha were also attending the meeting, where Ukraine was high on the agenda.

It has been relatively rare for Mr Lavrov to attend forums with senior Western officials, although he recently attended the United Nations General Assembly and the G20 summit in Brazil.

Thousands of North Korean soldiers have been stationed at checkpoints in Russia’s embattled Kursk Oblast but are not involved in direct combat, according to Ukraine’s military-run National Resistance Center.

Between 10,000-12,000 troops sent are being used as a “second echelon”, the Center added, deepening ties between the two countries.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he had imposed sanctions on Georgian former prime inister Bidzina Ivanishvili and some members of Georgia’s government.

“These are sanctions against the part of the government in Georgia that is handing Georgia over to (Russian resident Vladimir) Putin,” Mr Zelensky said.

Tensions have been rising between Georgia’s governing party and opponents who say the South Caucasus country is pursuing increasingly authoritarian, anti-Western and pro-Russian policies.

There is only a “remote chance” Russia would directly attack or invade the United Kingdom, the chief of the Armed Forces has said.

“That includes recognising that there is only a remote chance of a significant direct attack or invasion by Russia on the United Kingdom, and that’s the same for the whole of Nato,” Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said at his annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute on Wednesday (4 December).

A family member of Russian president Vladimir Putin accidentally revealed what is likely a confidential tally of the appeals by relatives of soldiers trying to track down their missing loved ones.

Anna Tsivilyova, the daughter of Mr Putin’s cousin and a deputy defence minister, said the government received tens of thousands of appeals from relatives trying to trace soldiers, dead or missing, through DNA samples.

Nearly 50,000 relatives of Russian troops have submitted DNA samples, a government minister has been recorded as saying.

The figure was given by Deputy Defence Minister Anna Tsivilyova at a round-table discussion on 26 November, prompting a senior lawmaker to warn that such data should not be published anywhere.

Russia has not released official statistics about its war losses in Ukraine since the initial months following its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Western countries believe hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded in gruelling trench warfare in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two.

Independent news site Astra published a video of last week’s meeting where Russian officials and lawmakers were discussing support for troops involved in what Moscow calls its “special military operation” and for their family members.

Tsivilyova said the 48,000 soldiers’ relatives had submitted their DNA for free to an interior ministry database.