Taking stock of the fighting in Ukraine for the year 2024, Vladimir Putin welcomed the pace of his troops’ advance on Monday, December 16. Less numerous and less well armed, the Ukrainian forces have been losing ground for months, but at a pace that has accelerated since the fall. Russian soldiers are today notably at the gates of the strategic towns of Pokrovsk, Kupiansk and Kurakhové. “Russian troops have the strategic initiative across the entire line of contact,” assured the Russian president in a speech to the main executives of his Defense Ministry. Speaking a few hours later, Donald Trump said he wanted to speak to his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts to stop the “carnage” in Ukraine.
Information to remember:
⇒ Senior Russian army official killed in Moscow explosion
⇒ Donald Trump wants to talk to Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to stop the “carnage”
⇒ The United States and its allies warn against North Korean involvement in Ukraine
Top Russian army official killed in Moscow explosion
A senior Russian army official was killed in the explosion that occurred Tuesday morning near a residential building in the southeast of Moscow, announced the Russian Investigative Committee, responsible for the main investigations in the country.
“An explosive device placed in a scooter parked near the entrance to a residential building was activated on the morning of December 17 on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow,” the committee said in a statement. “The commander of the Russian radionuclear, chemical and biological defense forces, Igor Kirillov, and his deputy were killed” following the explosion, according to the same source. The entrance to the building was seriously damaged and the windows of several apartments were broken, according to images published by Russian media. “A criminal investigation into the assassination of the two soldiers in Moscow has been opened,” according to the Russian Investigative Committee. Investigators were dispatched to the scene and examinations are underway to establish “all the circumstances” of the incident, according to the same source.
In office since April 2017, Igor Kirillov was sanctioned in October by the United Kingdom for “deploying barbaric chemical weapons in Ukraine”. “An unprecedented crime was committed in Moscow,” reacted the Russian daily Kommersant on his site. General Kirillov “was not the leader of the most important participant in the Russian special operation” in Ukraine, the newspaper believes. “But it was he who spoke, during his briefings, about the American biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine”, of which Moscow accused Washington, Kommersant recalls, by affirming that the Ukrainian special services were behind this assassination.
Donald Trump wants to talk to Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky to stop the “carnage”
US President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he wanted to speak to his Russian counterparts, Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian counterparts, Volodymyr Zelensky, to stop the “carnage” of the war in Ukraine, after the master of the Kremlin welcomed the advance of his troops on the front.
Donald Trump, who is due to take office in January, promised during his election campaign to end the war quickly, and has already called for an “immediate ceasefire” and talks, so much so that Europeans and Ukrainians fear he could force major concessions from kyiv and hand the Kremlin a geopolitical victory. “We’re going to talk to President Putin and we’re going to talk (to) Zelensky and (the) representatives of Ukraine. We have to stop this, it’s carnage,” Donald Trump said Monday from his residence in Mar-a- Lake in Florida.
“A large part of this territory, when you look at what happened… There are towns where there is not a building standing, it is a demolition site […]. So people cannot return to these cities, there is nothing left,” declared the future American president.
North Korean involvement against Ukraine, a “dangerous widening” of the conflict
North Korea’s “direct” support for Russia in the conflict against Ukraine represents “a dangerous widening” of the war, the United States and its allies warned on Monday, while kyiv affirmed the same day that “at least 30 soldiers” North Korean, fighting alongside the Russian army, were injured or killed Saturday and Sunday in the Russian region of Kursk, partially occupied by kyiv forces.
“We urge North Korea to immediately cease all assistance to Russia for its war of aggression against Ukraine, including by withdrawing its troops,” the chief diplomats of Australia, the United Nations and the United Nations said in a statement. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. In their press release, the ten countries and the EU also denounce “the export, by North Korea, of ballistic missiles, artillery shells and other military equipment to Russia for its use on the field of battle against Ukraine.”
Westerners fear that in exchange for this assistance, Moscow will help Pyongyang. The heads of diplomacy thus expressed their “deep concern” regarding “any political, military or economic support that Russia could provide to North Korea’s illegal arms program, including weapons of mass destruction”.