Ukraine war latest: Putin’s planes ‘stole Ukrainian children’ in early months of war

Russian Navy frigates equipped with new generation hypersonic cruise missiles have conducted drills in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, the Russian Defence Ministry has said.

The crews of the frigates fired Zircon (Tsirkon) hypersonic anti-ship missiles, while a Russian submarine launched a Kalibr cruise missile, another weapon capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the ministry said.

On the coast nearby, a missile system carried out a live launch of an Onyx anti-ship missile, it said.

As Ukraine’s military struggles to find enough troops, particularly infantry, to hold off Russia’s much larger army, some units are giving a second chance to those who have absconded from service.

Data from the prosecutor’s office shows nearly 95,000 criminal cases have been opened since 2022 against soldiers going “absent without leave” (AWOL) and for the more serious crime of battlefield desertion.

The number of cases has risen steeply with each year of the war: almost two-thirds of the total are from 2024. With many tens of thousands of troops killed or wounded, it is a depletion that Ukraine can ill afford.

Now, some units are replenishing their ranks by accepting soldiers previously declared AWOL.

One of them is Ukraine’s elite 47th Brigade, which published a social media post last month inviting soldiers who had absconded to join. “Our aim is to give every soldier the opportunity to come back into the fold and realise his potential,” the post announced. In the first two days, the brigade said, over a hundred applications came in.

“There was a tsunami of applications; so many that we still aren’t able to process them all before new ones come in,” Viacheslav Smirnov, the 47th’s head of recruitment, said two weeks after the announcement.

Moscow’s troops have been capturing village after village in Ukraine’s east, part of a drive to seize the industrial Donbas region, while Russian airstrikes target a hobbled Ukrainian energy grid as winter sets in.

“We will all need to do more. The stronger our military support to Ukraine is now, the stronger their hand will be at the negotiating table,” Mr Rutte said ahead of a Nato meeting in Brussels.

“Putin is not interested in peace. He is pressing on, trying to take more territory. Because he thinks he can break Ukraine‘s resolve and ours, but he is wrong.”

While he has yet to reveal details of his plan to end the war, hints that Ukraine would be forced to make significant concessions to its Russian invaders have worried Nato countries.

The UK and France are inching closer to consider deploying troops to Ukraine to monitor a ceasefire should Kyiv and Moscow begin peace talks, a senior Nato official said on the condition of anonymity.

The official said Paris and London are looking at options for a variety of situations that can take place in Ukraine, reported Radio Free Europe. These discussions are not held within Nato structures but as between the respective national governments, the official said.

One of the options being considered would entail sending a task force of troops to the contact line to enforce an armistice, the report added.

A number of Nato members are waiting for the incoming US administration led by Donald Trump to take office before making up their minds on Ukraine’s request for an invitation to join the alliance, Latvia’s foreign minister said.

“In principle, we as political leaders have agreed that Ukraine will be a member,” Latvian foreign minister Baiba Braže told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting.

“The issue is what conditions when, and obviously that is where the alliance has to come together. All allies, currently, everybody is waiting for the new US administration to start working, so I think that is one aspect that is said or unsaid, but it’s a reality,” he said.

Braže, a former senior Nato official, said Ukraine’s battle-hardened military would be an asset for Nato, and that her country would be in favour of inviting Ukraine to join if a decision was on the table.

“A number of countries don’t necessarily feel comfortable inviting a country at war to join Nato,” the minister said, adding: “We are more flexible.”

Kyiv has urged Nato foreign ministers to issue an invitation at a meeting in Brussels this week, but movement appears unlikely amid opposition from some capitals and the transition in Washington.

After the edict late on Tuesday night, the military surrounded the National Assembly in Seoul and clashed with protesters outraged at the declaration.

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The Kremlin has said that a US decision to send another weapons package to Ukraine worth $725 million showed that the outgoing Biden administration was determined to throw oil on the fire of the war in Ukraine to ensure the conflict kept going.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the aid package would not change the situation on the frontline.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Monday that the new aid would include Stinger missiles, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and drones and land mines.

Asked about the aid package, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The current administration is pursuing its goals, its consistent line is to keep this war from slowing down.

“The (Biden) administration is doing everything it can to further add fuel to the fire. At the same time, this and other aid packages cannot change the course of events, cannot affect the dynamics on the frontlines.”